The Deep
by EJWhelan86
Summary: Set in dusty District 10 in Panem, the children of the Tyler family come to grips with the struggle of life under the tyrant President Snow. Though relying on each other for comfort, strength and courage, Moxie, Bess, Arvensis, Elka, Lenox and Striker Tyler begin to see their own kindred connections fall apart as the perils of growing up become as real as the deadly Hunger Games.
1. Prologue

PROLOGUE

The heat swelled beyond boiling, even after the sun had dropped below the grassy canyon edge and out of sight. At the edge of the still, defeated landscape of the Gaming Reserve – the last of its kind in District 10 – was the Compound; it was a complex of burnt out prairie hovels with turf roofing and pitch-poor deadwood planks as walls. The knots and roughly sanded edges left cracks between the planks, and some inventive Prairie Dogs stretched old Sioux canvases over the top and sides of their homes. In a drought season such as this one, though, canvases helped start fires. If the Compound caught another fire, its forty-something inhabitants would have to wander again, away from the Gaming Reserve and back toward the Ranches and Town. Given the short supply of freedom they could exercise out here, nobody wanted a fire to catch and send them flying back toward the stuffy Ranches – the special plot of land set aside for the Victor's Village – and the Peacekeepers. Besides, the only clean source of water was in these parts, though the basin was beginning to look more like a small part of the canyon drop than anything close to a pond.

The heat swelled beyond boiling, and Miss Velvetta Cordwip – the gold-skinned midwife from the Town – did not like it one bit. She mopped her brow with an already drenched bandana and grasped the slick hands of Miss Violet Tyler, a pretty young mother in the final throws of childbirth. One boy was out and in his Daddy's arms, but the second hadn't decided if he was going to live in this world or die with his Momma. His head and right shoulder were peeking out of his mother's womb, but she had no strength left to push him the rest of the way, and Miss Velvetta Cordwip had no intention of trying to pull him out herself. From the look of her, Miss Violet Tyler was fighting three battles at once: the battle of childbirth, the battle for her life, and the battle against dehydration. The heat seemed to be drinking up every last drop of water the poor mother had in her body. She was beginning to look parched, her cries were broken by her crackled dry throat.

Velvetta Cordwip gripped her hands tightly and locked her gaze like a Rancher stares down a steer. "Ya gotta push one more time, gal," she said, giving her strength to the dying woman. _Maybe it weren't no use_ , she thought, _But we've seen too much of death 'round here to let this'un go now._ Miss Violet Tyler shook her head and whispered, "Miss Vetta, I cain't push no more. Is he outta me?" Velvetta Cordwip followed the Momma's eyes to her first born son in his Daddy's arms and she shook her head.

"He's jus' the first'un. Y'all have a second'un a-comin' too. So long 's ya give another push Miss Violet. One more good'un." But Miss Violet could only scream, and it brought her four little girls out of their small dark room at the back of the hovel. Moxie, Bess, Arvensis and little Elka clung to each other in the doorway. Vetta Cordwip tried to shoo them off but they were too paralyzed with the baby half in and half out. And outside, the smallest whisper of wind swept across the sundried plains. The brittle grass broke under its dancing, and the parched dead trees groaned, their limbs clanging against the other like a death rattle. What small trace of wind could slip into the hovel did so through the holes in the wall where once a knot had been and through the cracks between boards. Outside in the dirty enclosure of the Compound, life stirred just a little. And then, low but unmistakable, a growling rumble of thunder. Then, the world was breathlessly hot and stiflingly humid again, still… too still.

"One more push for Miss Vetta Cordwip, awright gal?" Vetta kept the urgency out of her voice. Drowsily, Violet Tyler nodded, then scrounged up her face and gave the very last of her strength to one final push, releasing such a howling cackled scream that the girls, led by little Elka, raced from the hovel with looks of terror on their faces. Vetta Cordwip had no time to care about them – they wouldn't stray far anyway. Her arms were covered in fluid, blood and newborn child as the baby emerged from his mother into them. Swiftly, she wiped him down with a cloth at her side, withdrew her knife and quickly cut the cord between mother and child, rubbing his tummy with soothing herbal ointment to keep him from realizing the horror that came with being born. Then she tied up the remaining cord into a button on his belly and wrapped him loosely in the damp cloth. Miss Violet was still breathing, but it was raspy. Vetta Cordwip moved fast: she called Moxie in and handed her the newborn baby – which was ready to cry but didn't seem overly convinced he ought to – then called for Mr. Tyler to come on over and be beside his wife. She took the firstborn son in her own arms and handed him to Bess, who could almost carry him on her own. But as the small girl teetered, looking for her balance, Vetta thought better of herself and took the child back in her own safe arms. _Seen too much death around here. Don't need to let this'un go now._

"Go on outta here, gals," Vetta chirped at the two sisters, who promptly ducked out of the hovel without a word. The grasslands spread out before them, and it was all you could see for miles around, unless you counted that ugly electric fence marking the edge of District 10 and the beginning of the wild, and nobody much did count it. Before that ugly mean fence, though, the grassy plains suddenly quit being flat and dropped, just a little at first, but then steadily until the land practically fell away into a canyon of many colors. It was rusty red and light green – more on account of the dead grass in that corner of District 10 – but at the foot of the rolling cliff wall – couldn't have been more than fifteen feet vertical to drop, but it was rough ground to drop onto – was the basin of the only river that flowed through the Compound. On the other side, where the land picked itself back up and climbed up to the top of the canyon walls, was the fence: beyond it, the wild people seemed to camp just beyond reach. Sometimes folks in the Compound would look out across the grassy sea and catch the flickering of their wild fires, or maybe hear a rattle and a drum. Moxie, with the baby, Bess, Arvensis – they called her "Sissy" – and little Elka looked out that way now as they left the hovel on Miss Vetta Cordwip's orders.

Lightning silently lit up behind the canyon walls. The wind roughed up the girls as it came in stronger than before, and the dusty circle that was the Compound's common ground came alive as the dust danced in whipping circles, finally resting when the wind paused. On the old Fifty Yards Tree – because it was fifty yards from the Compound – a dead limb shrieked its last and when the wind howled through again, it took the limb clear off the body and sent it crashing at the fifty-three yard line from the girls' Compound. Moxie looked behind her as the growling thunder rolled in from the West, and she tugged Sissy closer to her as the wind howled in from the East. On the common ground side of the hovel, the mule and her young'un were kept tied up. If it started to rain, Moxie knew the mule and her young'un would make room for them. The rain was poison; it could kill you dead. Bess was clinging to Sissy and Moxie now as the thunder rolled again, this time breaking what seemed like several hundred yards away. The lightning lit up the sky in response, briefly showing the purple, black and a hint of pea green above them. And Miss Vetta Cordwip was there, rustling little Elka's tawny head. They all seemed to be holding their breath now, just like the storm that was preparing to break. The intensity of it was in the air: electrifying and stiflingly hot. It weighted down on the girls and even the cattle and livestock in the common ground lowed and complained. Another very strong gust of wind almost took little Elka off her feet, but Moxie watched as Miss Vetta Cordwip clutched her youngest sister hard. She scowled.

"Boy's goinna need a name," Moxie growled. "Watchoo reckon on?"

"You call 'm Lenox, you hear?" Miss Vetta growled back. "Means, 'the night'."

"Lenox," the girls repeated. Then the wind bore down on them all at once and chased them into the common ground. Thunder broke less than a hundred yards away and the lightning that answered it showed a sky about ready to tear open and fall down upon them. Without a word, Miss Vetta led them to the mule shack and shoved the clod over to give them room, just in time before the sky did open and pour down rain on them. It hissed as it hit the parched earth. Moxie found herself leaning against Miss Vetta's generous bosom – she was by no means a buxom woman, though generous of chest – and she could feel the midwife's heart banging against her body as if it was a prisoner trying to break free. The first downpour was only a minute before it let up, but no one moved, knowing the next onslaught could come at any time and at any strength. The thunder continued to argue with the lightning, and the wind laughed as it whipped through the abandoned Compound common ground, occasionally dipping into the mule shed to thrash the girls and Miss Vetta. Baby Lenox slept through it all, and when the wind quit beating on them and moved onward, Miss Vetta let off a huge sigh and looked down at Moxie.

"How old are you now, girlie?" She asked.

"Seven," Moxie returned.

"Seven." Miss Vetta repeated. "You know you got four more years yet, right?" Moxie nodded. In four years she would be eligible for the Reaping in District 10. The next onslaught of rain lasted more than fifteen minutes, and it pounded the earth and all that was built on it so hard that little pockets of earth opened up and made tiny riverways for the rain to cascade down. Once it was on the ground and mixing with the dirt, it wasn't as acidic but all the same the girls made concessions for it to move where it wished. Little Elka had a brief moment of scariness in which she almost found herself outside of the protection of the roof, but Miss Vetta pulled her back from the edge just in time before she fell over it. In this sort of downpour, they knew their skin could get burned really bad from the rain, but if it was less torrential than this, stepping out for a few seconds would sting a bit and leave bruises for sure but it wouldn't kill anyone. Not for just a few minutes in it. As the rain continued to assault the world around them, Miss Vetta leaned in close and good to Moxie and growled, "You listen'a me, ya hear," there was an urgency in her voice that made Moxie listen attentively. "You don't you sign up for any extra grain, ya hear? You don't you put yourself in the bowl at any greater risk to go to the Games, ya hear? You come you by Miss Velvetta Cordwip's in Town when you run outta food and I'll give you what you need, ya hear?"

"What about Momma?" Moxie called back, straining over the rain. To her credit, Miss Velvetta Cordwip, a midwife of District 10, didn't mince her words, even for a girl of seven. "Your Momma's dead, Moxie love. You gotta be a big girlie now, ya hear?"


	2. Chapter 1: Moxie Tyler

CHAPTER ONE: Moxie Tyler

I PULLED THE SHE-MULE TO THE SIDE O' THE DUSTY ROAD SO'S THEM Peacekeepers could pass. They had a big old motorcar that was big and definitely _old_ , all beat up and like. But we had nothing to compare but our feet and they was pretty beat up too. So I guess we were equal for once.

I pulled that darn mule right back onto the road when the Peacekeepers had gone. She wasn't anything special but she carried Elka when the heat burned her feet a few years back, and she was carrying Elka now too. So that was good. But she was looking a bit saggy in the middle now and moved none too fast either. Sissy brought up the rear and Bess walked alongside the creature and held Elka's hands while she sat astride the girl. Striker and Lenox stayed back at the Compound with the other kids who weren't school age yet. Being five years each, they could stick back only one more year from the Reaping. That's where we were going'. For me, it's my second year in and nothing yet, but Bess goes in the first time today. I catch a glance of her, and I reckon she's scared dumb of today, but then I see she's just telling' stupid stories to Elka. I had to sigh. Bess's been real brave. Elka, though, hasn't slept for a week on account of night terrors. She's too sensitive a child, I fear for her. If Bess or I go in this time… I am not going think about that. What's the use?

Sissy looks real nice today. She's got on one of my old dresses. Miss Vetta Cordwip made that one for me on my 10th birthday, and since the Reaping's always the same day every year – and that's Sissy's birthday – I figured she should wear it as a tradition. It's special to us. Its blue stripes down the straps on the shoulders and down to the knees where the dress stops. The rest is white underneath the stripes. At the belt, they cross horizontally – that's a word Miss Vetta taught me – and boxed the white bits into little squares. Sissy's hair's coming' in like I think I remember Momma's being: jet black and awful straight. Sissy catches me looking at her and comes on up, skipping to me like it isn't Reaping Day. For another five years of getting to know her, I hope it isn't my time today.

"Tell me, what silliness is Bessy telling your sister 'bout?" I ask Sissy.

"She's trying to tell Elka that there are giants in the sky. I don't think there is but Bess is convinced there is. What do you think, Mox?"

"I think there's something in the sky, honest, but it isn't giants." I grin at my little sister.

"I don't know, Mox. What do you think makes the thunder an' lightning then? Isn't it giants fighting?"

"Nah, Sissy, it isn't giants fighting none. It's something else. You know that awful fence on the rough side o' the canyon? Know how it hisses like rain on the prairie? Well I think _that's_ what's happening' when the thunder takes up arguing' with the lightning. Miss Vetta calls it 'electricity."

"That's a strange thing to say, Mox," Sissy shows some serious concern. "How's all that hissing' got something to do with the sky?" I can't answer her because I don't rightly know. If I make it to Miss Vetta's after the Reaping Ceremony, I'll ask her. And then I get a shudder thinking' 'bout the Reaping'. Sissy knows it too. She's seen me shudder. "Hey Mox," she chirrups. "You were alive for Miss Atoka Menzies' Games weren't you?" I shake my head.

"Nah, I wasn't yet born. But I tell you 'bout that time I seen her at Miss Vetta's?" Sissy's face lights up and I see Bess and Elka are listening' too, so I clear my voice and tell 'm the story I must've told a hundred and ten times already.

It was a school day, but I was finished with classes and wanted a visit with Miss Vetta. Her rooms are above her herbs shop in Town. There's but fifteen families what live in Town, and the Menzies' are one of them. It's also the Morrison's, the MacNaghten's, the Forbes', the Munro's, the Keith's, the Gordon's and the MacFie's. The Robertson's are over on the red clay road with the MacInnes' and the Rose's, and on the near edge of Town is the Guthrie's, MacThomas's, Chisholm's and Daddy's family, the Tyler's. Usually Miss Vetta will let me come in the back door from the schoolyard, but she must've forgotten to unlock it for me because that day it was locked. I had to go around the shops to the front and climb up the steps to her herbs shop. I don't remember the last time I had been in the front part: Miss Vetta only lets me in the kitchen when I come by and visit, and it's a big kitchen, course, because folks that live in Town are rich folks, but there I was finding' myself walking' to go knocking' on Miss Vetta's shop door. Well what do you know, as soon as I get my fist all ready to knock, the door opens and there's Miss Atoka Menzies herself! She never looked fierce or nothing, not like when we see her on the moving' picture screen. I was looking at her and I knew who she was, and she just looked at me and smiled and walked her way back to the Victor's Village!

I remember seeing' her for the first time on the screen when we had to watch all the clips of the past victors of the Games, and she's the only living' one from 10, so we all had to watch for her Games. It was the 7th Games, the same Games I was born after. They came up on them four Islands and there was the fifth one in the center of the arena: water everywhere and basically no place for hiding'. There she is, Miss Atoka Menzies… but younger than she is now… and she's looking' fierce and a little scared too. Cut right away to the first kill where she faces down that boy from 7 and finally hangs him with the vines from the tree! Woooweee! That's a good kill. An' next she comes across the leader girl from 12. Miss Vetta says we ought to like District 12, an' maybe in a different world we would, but in the Games you had to kill even your friends. There's Miss Atoka Menzies spotting' the girl from 12 on the beach of their island. Next thing, they're fighting and tearing' at each other, an' at the last hope, Miss Atoka tosses sand up in her face and then gets the upper hand! Bam! Two down.

Of course we had to cut to Mr. Denton Forbes – poor cad getting' himself into it with the gal from 3. Except he gets away without killing her, which Miss Vetta says is a good thing. 'We don't need more deaths 'round here, girlie,' she likes to say. 'Seen too much o' death here. We don't need more.' But these are the Games! Course, the girl from 3 dies in the night anyway, so that's Mr. Denton through. Doesn't get it so easily the next cut on. It's Day 3 an' he comes through the trees an', WHAM! District 3 guy knocks him down. They go at it, first Mr. Denton has the upper, then the guy from 3, then Mr. Denton, then 3, 'til suddenly, Mr. Denton is on top o' 3 and suddenly they go still. Camera zooms, an' there's District 3, bleeding all over the rock his head been banged on. Course that means Mr. Denton is the last man standing on his island.

We cut back to Miss Atoka who's in it with the boy from District 5. He's trying to choke her out but he can't do it 'cause she keeps kneeing' him in the boy-parts. He gets a knife in her side an' we think it's all over. Even the camera's trying to get in to see if she's a dead one. No cannon fire, so can't be, but 5 isn't trying' to get her anymore. Then we see it! She's got the knife out of her side an' she's creeping' up on him behind. BAM! One side is in him, the other side is sticking' out of him. The cannon fires and Miss Atoka's the last woman standing on her island!

That isn't the Miss Atoka Menzies I seen that day. I actually can't picture the Miss Atoka I've seen as the Miss Atoka on the screens each year. I think that's why she isn't ever there for them replays. That isn't her. So the Games change you, I guess. There isn't anything more changing than being dead.

Then they cut to the big finale. It's been only four days to the point when Mr. Denton swims across to the big island in the center of the arena. He meets, of course, Miss Atoka, and she's bleeding'. She's been stabbed deeply, but only in her side. Mr. Denton, turns out, isn't doing so good himself. Seems like they aren't going to kill each other after all. They just kind of sit there and mend. Day 5 goes by, then Day 6. Mr. Denton isn't looking good at all. An' on Day 7, some awful tidal wave come roaring up and tried to squash them but it isn't doing anything more than help kill the tribute from District 4. Shocking' because you think District 4'd be the good swimmers. But he's dead. That leaves just the District 1 girl, Miss Atoka and Mr. Denton, an' he isn't looking' good at all now. Night time comes an' sure as sure, poor Mr. Denton dies from his scrapes. It's all sad sorry music watching Miss Atoka find 'm an' see he's deader than a doorknob.

Then the real battle begins. Day 8 must have been real hot because we see District 1 swimming all around, stopping on other islands and looking around for the only remaining Tribute. An' Miss Atoka's getting' herself all ready for the war. Sure as sure, Day 9 rolls around and District 1 finds Miss Atoka. They fight like it's the last fight of their lives, but in the end it's Miss Atoka, bloody and limping and looking broken into pieces, who lifts a handmade rope, lassoes District 1 right 'round the neck and SNAP! BANG! BOOM! She's the Victor o' the 7th Games.

Sissy isn't so keen on my story anymore. It's too gory for her anyways. I tug her to my side as we go on and walk along. The Town is getting' nearer anyways, and before it is the Ranches and the Victor's Village. Miss Atoka is the only one in there nowadays. She always wears the same thin golden shift on her tall sleek body when it's a Reaping' Day. I point out the train station standing not very far from the Victor's Village. "That's where they'll be taking either me or Bess today if the odds aren't in our favor." Sissy gives a little whimper and I know I've gone too far now, so I tug her harder against me and yank the mule's rope a little more. "I'm only kidding. We aren't going' in the Games. My name's in there just three times, thanks to Miss Vetta, and Bessy's here is only going in today once. The odds are in our favor for sure. Just you wait an' see!" Sissy doesn't look like she believes me, and I don't blame her: if my big sister was talking like I am now, I'd be really scared out of my shift. Of course I only say because now that we're getting' closer to the Town, and closer to the Reaping', I'm pretty darn well scared to death myself. Three times is more than one, and one was bad enough. But I am not going to tell Bessy or Sissy that. Miss Vetta tells me I had to be strong, had to be a big girlie now. I had to start I suppose and start somewhere, an' here's 'bout as good as anywhere.

THE TOWN ON REAPING DAY IS JUST AWFUL. All the glum-faced kids in their bright outfits are shuffling their feet toward the Town Hall, all the bright and odd Capitol folk look really out of place like they're from some other planet or something with their cameras and their _Test, one, two , three_ … it's just awful. We had to pass by Miss Vetta's shop, so I take Elka down from the she-mule and tie the creature up before we stop into Miss Vetta's for a quick round of hellos. She's gotten on in years but she's still like I remember her. Gold-skinned, buxom, wearing always a damp bandana on her head, tying up her black hair I guess. She dress smart in a nice gray dress and today she's even wearing a little piece o' flowers strung together around her neck. If I didn't know her better, I'd say she was pretty and stylish, but we don't give much for pretty or stylish about here. Can you rope a bull or any gosh-darn bovine with "pretty" or "stylish"? Didn't think so, so don't pay much mind to those things. So Miss Vetta would say. She apologizes for not having the time to ask us for a sit down but she promises cookies with lemon in them when we get done with all that hoopla over the Games.

"How old are you, girlie?" She growls at me like usual.

"Twelve years, Miss Vetta." I reply back. I've been doing this a long time.

"This is your second Games then, girlie?" She frowns. I nod. "Well… I will be looking out for you when it's all said and done." She turns to Bess next.

"How old are _you_ , sweetie?"

"Eleven years, Miss Vetta." Miss Vetta sucks her teeth but puts on a smile.

"Oh my sweet girlie, you're growing too darn fast! You stop that now, you hear?" She breaks her frown into a smile so that our more serious Bessy knows she isn't as mad as she sounds. Maybe Bessy's a bit too sensitive too. I don't reckon so: it's her first Games, so I reckon she's just getting scared now.

"An' dear sweet child, how old are _you_?" Miss Vetta's gone on to Sissy.

"I-I'm ten years, Miss Vetta." Sissy manages, wide-eyed. Miss Vetta smiles at her.

"I've got some good old lemon drop cookies and some fresh milk from _my_ Bessie this morning, so when you're done through with the Reaping Ceremonies, you just come on back over here and get some of that, you hear?" Sissy smiles and nods.

"Well, let's see how old this little lady is," Miss Vetta lifts Elka into her arms and brings her up close and gentle to her face, like I imagine Momma would've done. "Oh no, don't you be telling' me, little missy! I'm going to guess. Mmmm, you can't be younger than six years, am I right?"

"I'm eight years, Miss Vetta!" Elka busts out.

"Aren't you turning into some fine young lady, Miss Elka? You come on back here for some milk and cookies after the ceremony with your sister, you hear?" Elka nods, allowing a small and nervously slow smile cross her face. Then we hear the Peacekeepers' motorcar coming 'round, so Miss Vetta puts Elka down and turns all serious.

"I'll be looking for you," she says, like she always does. "I'll be looking for all of you, just as soon as this thing's over and done." She locks eyes with me. I feel more scared of letting Miss Vetta down, now, than of getting my name selected from that bowl.

"Yes ma'am, Miss Vetta," we all manage, though I don't really know how I do.

The Town Hall used to be something to look at but now it just looks like it's getting tired. Some folks talk about it being "ren-o-vated" soon, but no one says much more than that, and it's all school chatter, so more than half of it isn't true. The biggest screen you ever seen is set up on the side, and right now it's got the seal of Panem, which is impressive but scary too. Later, it'll have us on it… I don't rightly know how but it will. Something to do with them cameras all over the dusty square.

The girls is forming into a line trailing up to the place where we're going to check in. Everyone had to have their fingers printed by the officials so they know we're still here. I guess they don't rightly care much for Lenox and Striker, then, because if they don't know they exist, well that's no big deal for them. But me and Bess particularly, we _need_ to exist for them 'cause we're getting' our names in the bowl today. I push my way through so I can be with Bess when she goes for her finger-pricking'. I can't let her cry at the very beginning and make it worse for all of us. Thankfully I can stand with her because they aren't roping off the twelves and elevens like they do with the fourteens and fifteens. It's her turn now and I hold onto her shoulder to keep her calm. Some nights in the dead of summer when the world is so still and sticky and electric, I hold her shoulders while she pretends to be asleep because I know she isn't on account of being afraid of the lightning'. She still thinks it's what took Momma away, and I don't have any better answer for her, so I let her go on thinking' it. All we knew was Momma went away the same night that Old Fifty Yards Tree got struck and set on fire. It woke up Baby Striker – he was Baby Boy to that point – and I swore he laughed when he seen it. Right then and there, Daddy named him Striker on account of the lightning' strike. I hope he isn't watching at home.

Now Bessy's done with the finger pricking and she's turning to me, a look of relief on her face. I flash her one single reassuring smile before I'm told I need to put out my finger and Bess needs to keep moving. Those Capitol folks are so pushy. I watch Bess get pulled into the crowd of elevenses in the roped off area. They're the youngest to be eligible for Reaping. What if Bess does get picked? What'll Miss Vetta say then? I don't get a chance to finish that thought because I get pricked then and my finger gets rolled on the paper to show I still exist. And that's it. Sissy and Elka are required to be here but they don't have to be registered. Some Peacekeeper will come around during the Anthem and take their names. They done it last year alright without me, so I think they'll be okay this time too. Of course it's harder to see two sisters in the pen rather than just one. I have faith in them.

I manage to push through again and find Bess, and I put my hand in hers and give it a good squeeze. I can't look around right now because if I do I'll get all scared again and then it'll be all wrong because she's looking at me for courage and comfort, and I need to give it to her. Her name's in only once – we made sure of that. Miss Vetta don't take money from folks for her herbs, but she does take other valuable things. She weighs them in accordance to their value, so it's almost like passing money from hand to hand. With the wealthier folk, she asks for a little extra: a little extra flour, a little extra butter, a few extra sausage links, more cornmeal, more grits, and so on. She stores 'm up and hands 'm off to me in my school bag so no one suspects anything. That's how I don't have to put my name in more than three times this year and we still feed well. I'm going to keep on doing that too so neither Bess nor Sissy nor Elka – when her time's up – have more than the smallest number of entries in their name. I can't think what it would do to me if one o' them got called on.

The Reaping Ceremony begins. What the heck am I going to do? Bess wriggles her hand out of mine a minute and makes a face at me. We can't talk to each other during the Reaping, but her scowl tells me something'. I quit guessing when she puts her hand back in mine. Maybe I was squeezing in too tight or something. And now we have to endure the program about how bad we was once and how the Capitol saved us from utter desolation, and because we have been saved by the Capitol we have to volunteer a boy and a girl between ages 11 and 17 each year to compete in the Hunger Games against all the other Districts except the Capitol. And this is obviously for our own good as well as the good of all Panem. It's history, but it's our history. We rebelled, and we lost. Now we're going to keep on losing. I take back some of my eagerness at the Games I was retelling about Miss Atoka now that I'm here and waiting to be called on or not. The last thing is the Anthem, and we all have to listen to it. I don't mind it, really. It's almost something to be proud of, except when you think about what it stands for. There's a horn of plenty for us all, but who counts as _us_ , all?

Now it's time for the Reaping. I think I could hear my heart banging against my chest like that night when momma went away and I heard Miss Vetta's heart banging against hers. The person for District 10 is a guy in a ridiculous green outfit with bright orange pants. His face is too white and his eyes a little too yellow, almost like a ratter cats, and when he speaks there's nobody who can understand him. He is talking even now I can't tell you what he's saying until I make out that he's saying something about odds in our favor and that ladies should go first… I guess. But there's no mistaking his meaning when he dips his hand into that big awful bowl and pulls out a slip of paper.

This is the moment.

Is me? Moxie Tyler?

Is it Bess Tyler?

He's too slow to the microphone, and he clears his throat annoyingly about twenty times – while I'm sure I know now what dying feels like – before he opens it to announce,

"Flaxie McKay."

 _Flaxie McKay!_ I let out my breath and look around for this Flaxie McKay, and I find her at last, moving slowly toward the stage. She's older than me so she could probably win the Games. She looks to be Miss Atoka Menzies' age at least when she won the Games. Still, I can't believe I've been saved again this year. I turn the magical name over in my head – magical only because it isn't mine or Bess's: Flaxie McKay; Flaxie McKay; Flaxie McKay. Finally it don't make much sense anymore. Flaxie McKay is up there on the stage looking' at the stupid Capitol man as he goes to the boys' bowl and rummages around for a slip of paper. He goes to the microphone again, clears his throat another annoying twenty times, then announces – not that I care much because it'll be years before Lenox and Striker are roped off up here – and announces,

"Seeder McKay."

There's a ripple of murmuring. I'm not sure I understand what just happened, but then I see a younger boy – maybe a year or two more than me – step forward and walk slowly toward the stage. And I think I've seen him before. And then he's on the stage. And then I realize he and the girl look a lot alike. And then the name comes back to me: Flaxie McKay and Seeder _McKay_. Oh shoot! I groan at the silent part and everyone looks at me. They can't be, but they must be, but it can't ever happen could it? Can they reap a brother and sister into the Games?


	3. Chapter 2: Velvetta Cordwip

CHAPTER TWO: Velvetta Cordwip

Every Reaping Day is a reminder of that first Reaping Day. The one when it began. After the Rebellion was ended, they – the Capitol – said they were going to reward us with our lives, but that we'd be paying a price for the rebellion some time real soon. When and how were details they weren't willing to give us, but all they said was it would be really soon. So we all went back to our lives like they were before the rebellion... those of us that could, ofcourse, and I know'd some that couldn't. Some of those that just couldn't accept their defeat – _our_ defeat – well, they just rose up in arms again. That's when the Capitol thought it'd be a good idea to have officials in the Districts, and along came the Peacekeepers. A lot happened in those times, and not much of it is worth remembering. It's been 19 years now since that first Reaping Day, but I remember it like it was a day ago. Especially when I see those Tyler girls all dressed up and holding onto their courage. I'm not a young woman these days, but I was a young one on that first Reaping Day. I remember the announcement: we have to meet out in the town square and be dressed like how we want the whole of Panem to see us. Of course not everyone took that to mean dressed up, but I fussed over my hair and my dress something shameful, not that it amounted to anything, not in the end.

Iffy helped me fuss but she didn't do too much fussing herself. She was my sister, and she was one of them gals given natural prettiness. She was gold-skinned like me and had pretty sapphire eyes – a mighty fine work of art - and had all those cowboys and some of those cow-men too fussing over her when they got the chance – and she could put on just about anything and look just fine. She was a bit of what we folks might call a Cassandra; in her head she'd see things sort of how they might happen in the future. She caused all sorts of trouble when she'd say something in warning, so people with some sense would stay distant from her. Some folks made her out to be a witch and I don't know but that was about the worst for her. Anyways, she didn't do much fussing for herself that first day, and she tried to tell me it was something not worth fussing over. But I only heard that we were going to be on television for all of Panem, and I wanted to look mighty sweet for those funny Capitol folks. I think back on it now, so soon after them Tyler girls left from here, and I got the feeling for being all ashamed of myself. But the thing is we didn't know what was going to happen. Iffy's real name was Iffigenia, but I'd go around lying and saying momma was planning on us all being called after fabrics so I was after velvet and Iffy was after chiffon. I know dear Iffy's someplace better now.

Those folks who couldn't accept our defeat, well the Peacekeepers got orders to round them up in each District and to keep them watched over until the day. Then the announcement went out and it went to them too. I remember walking into the Town and the town square for the first time and seeing the T.V. screens all set up around the Town Hall. Some Capitol folks came too, and their train was in the old station. It got bombed when the Capitol was declaring its victory, but overnight – I guess I mean that literally – it was rebuilt and there was that shiny train in at the station. It made you feel like something really great was going to happen. Then we saw the rebels from District 10 standing out in front of the town hall, black bags over their heads and all, and suddenly that shiny new station and its Capitol-sent train, they got all scary. The announcement got made for us that we needed to go through a procedure: we were going to have our fingerprints taken, but not in ink. They were going to be in blood. They come 'round and prick our index finger, squeeze out a drop of blood onto a paper, then roll our finger on it to take the print. It was called the registration, and now, every time there was a meeting like this one we'd be registered again. Iffy sighed, but I shivered.

Why'd we do it? Why'd we listen to the Capitol and go to that town square? I wasn't the type to fight, so I didn't, but looking back – and I still am not the fighting type… at least not against the Capitol – I see why some of them did. There we were in the town square, and suddenly the screens go on and start playing a video made by the Capitol about our history of violence and the grace of the Capitol to preserve our lives, but of course it was at a price, and then we heard what that price was going to be. Because each District had gone up in rebellion and been defeated, each District was going to pay the same price – in blood. Each year, beginning with this one, there was going to be a ceremony called the Reaping Day, and it was going to be about Reaping from among us two children from ages 11-17 to be what they were calling Tributes for a spectacle to honor the rebellion and salvation by the Capitol. One girl and one boy from each District would be selected as Tribute. The rules went on to say that if a Tribute was selected and for whatever reason someone else wanted to stand in their place, they could volunteer to be a Tribute once they were invited to do so. What was the spectacle to commemorate our past? Well, in a manufactured arena in a secret place, the twenty-four Tributes would be placed against each other to fight until only one was left. The single remaining Tribute would be called the Victor and he or she would win immunity from any further spectacle, as well as a lifetime of comfort provided by the Capitol and monthly allowance of food for his or her family. This spectacle would be called, henceforth, the Hunger Games.

Oh! It chills me even to _think_ the name! All these nineteen years there's been nineteen Victors from nineteen Games. Nineteen Reaping Days to remind me of that first one. It never ceases to be a chilling affair. We all was going to have a part in these Hunger Games, the announcement went on. Each of us was going to have to watch the recaps of the Hunger Games from their beginning to their end on each day of the Hunger Games. These Games were going to be filmed in the arena and some folks – Capitol folks, in other words – would get to watch them as they were happening, but we folk would watch them at night when they were going to be recapped. No one really understood what that meant… none of us really understood what any of this malarkey meant. It sounded all pretty bad, but we wasn't sure what it was going to feel like – except, I suspect, for Iffy. She was all sighs that first day. Then we was made to listen to the Anthem, and when that got done, the announcer said a little more about how our debt was one we'd keep on paying each year, our freedom was not bought cheaply and our transgressions against humanity and the Capitol, well they were going to be atoned for by blood. And soon as he shut up, those Peacekeepers pulled out their guns and shot to death all the hooded rebels on the steps of the town hall. It was just silent after that. The Peacekeepers took their time piling up the dead corpses off to the side, then roughly hosing down the steps till they were clean again. Nobody moved as they brought out two enormous glass bowls with paper slips in them and put them on two matching pedestals on either side of the steps of the town hall. The announcer stepped forward and waved his hand around the first bowl. "This one contains the names of all the girls of District 10 who are between 11 and 17 years old," he said. Then he goes over to the other bowl and says it again, only 'bout the boys. Then he goes to the center again and says in his Capitol accent, "Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be _ever_ in your favor."

He put his hand in the first bowl and pulled out a slip of paper, which he then read and it was not someone I recognized, but a girl proudly – maybe – stepped forward to the steps when he told her to. All we see is a child heading for the heavily armed Peacekeepers. The announcer asks for volunteers, but no one knows what to do. Iffy just sighs. She and me, we were too old for the Games but that didn't stop her from sighing like she knew something about them. Then he repeats for the boys and asks for volunteers, but no one goes, so we have two children now made into these things called Tributes. And once the Anthem plays and the doors to the town hall open and swallow them children up, we never see them again in the flesh.

I am not a faith woman, but I'm praying I see those Tyler girls again, and that's the truth. I don't go to the Reapings anymore. We're all going to have to watch them tonight anyway, so what's the use? I can't stop thinking about how Iffy's sighs had some sort of meaning behind them that I didn't know then and I reckon I still don't know today.

I remember the time the Tyler family split in two. It was Mason Tyler who done it. His twelfth year saw him into the Games, and I remember that because he was going in just after Atoka Menzies won. We'd never had a Tyler into the Games before that. Mason was a young one for sure. He didn't think so though. There were two Masons in the Town back then: one a Tyler, one a Chisholm, born in the same year. I pulled them out myself. Now as I think 'bout it, twelve is as old as Moxie Tyler is. I'm chilled to the bone marrow now thinking about her. I want to go to the window and see if I can see them out there, but it's no use. If they're still there, I'll be happy, but if they aren't….

Yes, I pretty much remember all them Reaping Days right up to and not past the Ninth Hunger Games, which was ten years ago today. The Ninth was hard to forget: they pulled out Oliver and Aspen Munro for District 10. Oliver was 16, and his sister Aspen was only just 11. Far as I could tell, they didn't get along very well. But we were all soft-hearted after Atoka Menzies and Denton took care of each other. We weren't ready for the Munros. I don't want to think about the Reapings anymore. I'm just going to keep my thoughts to myself now and wait on all four of those Tyler girls to come on back here to Miss Velvetta Cordwip.


	4. Chapter 4: Bess Tyler

CHAPTER FOUR: Bess Tyler

Everybody's always lookin' down in this world. Well I wanna be lookin' up! I wanna see the sun set across the prairie every evening. I wanna wander out with Lenox an' Striker an' see if we can catch us grouse or even prairie chickens. I wanna teach 'em how to chew grass when they get hungry and we ain't been catchin' much, and I wanna take 'em over onto the Gaming Reserve and make faces at the livestock… maybe even find some wild mint again. I jus' wanna show them they can have a good time of it. I guess I want too much sometimes.

I seen Daddy look down a lot. I can count on my one hand how many times I seen him smile. That's bad. Life ain't bad, even here in District 10. It's just hard. That's what! I don't think he remembers but I do: one time I saw Daddy cry. Daddy's a strong man, taller than some and Miss Vetta likes to call him handsome sometimes. I like it when he smiles – which ain't much, like I said – but I jus' hated it when I saw him cry. Where were we…? Oh yeah, we went out into the prairie. Over by the canyon and away from it a little walk is the place where we laid Momma down. I don't remember much of when Momma died except that we named Lenox that night and it rained something awful. The rain – folks say – is poisonous because of all the chemicals in the air from the time before the coasts flooded. Moxie says some of the turf in our roof will sap up the bad stuff so it won't sting when the water leaks through – if it leaks through – but don't stand out in the rain when it rains 'cause it could kill you. So Moxie says. I remember it was raining fierce the night we had to let Momma go. There was lightning and thunder too. Miss Vetta was there and she dragged us out to the mule shed to keep outta the rain. I remember the next day, Daddy dressed up and went into the Town on the mule – the she-mule was a baby still. When he come back, there was other folks with him and they covered up Momma in a sheet and borrowed shovels, and then they took her outta the hut. "Come say goodbye to your Momma," I remember Daddy sayin'. I suppose we did. Elka and Sissy were young, and I was young too… about Lenox and Striker's age now, so 5 years old… but Moxie was old, and she made us all hold hands and say our goodbyes to Momma. Then Daddy and the other folk went on out into the prairie and took Momma with them. When they came back around sunset, they were sweatin' and pantin' too. Dad was sweatin' all over his face, and it was all slick-looking. That was probably the first time I seen him cry, and I hated it then even. This time I'm rememberin' now was not so long ago. I was 9 I guess, and Striker an' Lenox were both 3. They were walkin' good so I took 'em out into the prairie to see what we could catch for Miss Vetta's soup. She sent us lark meat and hawk meat to make into a nice stew, but we needed somethin' else to take the edge off those tastes, so that was up to the boys an' me. We were out there lookin' and gatherin' when I seen Daddy goin' off toward the canyon. I was curious to know where he was goin' so I gathered the boys up and made them try to be quiet – which wasn't successful – so we hung back several yards and tracked Daddy into the prairie.

When the prairie starts to go dark, it gets all magical. First, the grass – which looks so dry an' thirsty in the sunlight – starts to go a diff'rent color than dull green. It gets into some color softer than that. The mounds where the prairie dogs pop outta cast long shadows across the ground, and when the sun hits it the outer wall of the canyon – the one we can see – shimmers in a dancing pattern of black, green, grey, burnt orange and red. This night I'm tellin' about, a cloud'd been hanging around the sky all day, but as the sun was goin' down, it moved the cloud and all a sudden, the canyon was jus' this brilliant, beautiful artwork from a time, I guess, before time. I loved it! See, if I was lookin' down, I'd never've seen that!

Lots of Prairie Dogs – that's what us folks in the Compound are called by the Townies – aren't too fond of the canyon. In one of the Games, there was a canyon with lots of deadly animals in it, and we had to watch mountain cats or snakes or preying birds pick off Tributes at the same time as Tributes were pickin' off Tributes. Of course the land around _that_ canyon was a desert so it was diff'rent than our canyon, but the job was done and no one – neither Prairie Dogs nor Townies – like to go near our canyon.

So I followed Daddy, Lenox and Striker being towed with me, until he got to the place where he stopped. I couldn't see it from where I was with the boys but there was something in the ground that Daddy stopped at. It almost looked like a little mound, like the one's a prairie dog might come outta, but there was something standing up on top of it. After he was gone, I looked closer and saw it was two strips of deadwood bark, one standing up vertical and one tacked in the middle of it and lying sideways so that the whole thing looked like a faceless, legless and headless person standing tall and stretching out its arms wide as they can go. Across the arms of the "person" was carved "VST" and some numbers. I put it together later that those were Momma's initials: Violet Scythe Tyler. He must've been reading the carving when I spotted it and wondered what it was because then he slumped his shoulders and drooped his head all sad-like. I didn't see the tears, but I didn't have to because the rest of his body was crying. It's that feelin' that you get when you see somethin' you ain't supposed to se – that's how I felt in that moment right there. It took me a few nights to pluck up the courage to say something to him, and when I did, I wished I hadn't seen anything at all. But I'll get on to that later.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if Miss Vetta is lookin' down or lookin' up. She's got good business in the Town an' lots of springtimes she's out here helping with the childbirthing, but as hard as she appears outside, I like seeing her when she's being soft. The way she makes us soups and smuggles goods to Moxie makes me think she's got her own way of lookin' up. The way she tells us she's goinna keep an eye out for us in coming back from the Reaping Day, an' how she always puts together something real nice for my birthday – makin' me feel all special – well, I like to think that's her way of lookin' up. Then there's other times when I seen her actin' diff'rently: she's not mean exactly, but she's not too nice. Hard, I think, is how folks put it: Miss Vetta Cordwip is a hard woman. I don't blame her. She's more of a Prairie Dog than a Townie. There's a difference too. Prairie Dogs keep as far outta Town as possible, and it takes somethin' real bad to happen – like a Reaping – to put us back into Town. Townies are exactly the same: they want nothin' to do with the prairie, and some are even scared of it. If they can't go to the shops and get them some food or whatever else it is they want or need, I bet they'd be completely lost. But we Prairie Dogs, we mostly pick our food off the land. Lark meat is chewy and there ain't a lot of it 'cause larks are small birds, but any meat is good meat if you know how to prepare it (and Miss Vetta does, so we're in good shape). Hawk meat can be a treat. Grouse will keep your lanterns lit from its grease and fat and it'll feed two mouths at a time. Prairie chickens are feisty but a real good meat when you can get them. Sometimes we have to make do with somethin' plain like sorghum wheat mashed with goat's milk: our neighbors keep a goat for its milk and cheese production and sometimes we trade the she-mule in exchange for some goat milk and cheese – and though it's illegal to poach, we might get a Prairie Dog to go poach an elk from the Gaming Reserve, and if it's a big one, then there's a small feast for at least two families. But our staple out here is cereal – anything with grains, anything done to grains that can be eaten, we do it. Miss Vetta helps smuggle us the stuff brought to Town from the Ranches an' we usually keep quiet when she does. It always gets us lookin' up, I think.

Moxie's a tricky one too. She looks down a lot, but I think it's her way of lookin' up too. I've known Moxie my whole life and we've been good sister. I'd call her my friend too except that I know she doesn't think there's much to friendship. I do, but we're allowed to be diff'rent. Moxie used to pay me lots of attention which feels good. We're only 14 months apart in birth. Her day is 2 months before the Reaping Day. So we've always been close. Moxie used to tell me stories when we'd be out with Daddy lookin' for food. A couple times we were so innocent lookin' Daddy would convince us to go onto the Gaming Reserve and poach animals there. I'd get scared of it so Moxie would tell me some silly story to keep me calm. We'd play a game of it. I remember her tellin' me the story, and it went like this: the Gaming Reserve was not some bad evil place, but it used to be some great kingdom where the folks in it were like us, but then one day an evil queen decided to change all the folks into animals and make them dumb. Moxie'd say that there was no way outta the Gaming Reserve for the folks who was trapped in there as animals, and that we had to fight against the ranch-hands – the folks from the Ranches who would come out into the Gaming Reserve and kill the animals to sell their meat in Town – who were agents of the evil queen. What the ranch-hands were doin' was murdering the folks from the old kingdom and it was our duty to steal them off the Reserve land, because once they were off the curse would be broken and they would be free. The only problem was that they'd been trapped as animals for so long that they'd forgotten how to be humans, so when we took them off the Reserve land, their human-selves would fly up outta the animal body and spread itself out all over the new kingdom – _our kingdom_ – and just be equal with every natural thing there. So when we killed the animals we poached, we weren't killing the trapped souls inside them but letting them free by sacrificing the animals. Of course, once you've killed an animal with lots of meat on it, you gotta cut it up and eat it. The story at least got me into the Reserve without more fussing.

Most times we were successful. I caught a hare once and later found out it was two hares. That made me feel bad about it a little, but Moxie told me we had to eat and the hares was there on the Reserve to get killed anyway, so better us than them ranch-hands an' cowboys. All the folks from the Ranches would do was kill 'em for sport and then sell 'em for too much money – 'least more money than most hungry folks could pay for 'em. So we was getting an expensive meal literally for free. Sometimes Moxie can be lookin' up then.

And then, I remember the day when we got caught. So poaching on the Gaming Reserve, like I said, is illegal because the Gaming Reserve is meant for the Ranches. They don't have enough grazing land for their livestock and cows, so the Reserve is for them and the other animals that are going to be meat for the Townies. The way Miss Vetta tells is, the Ranches are really big houses meant for keepin' the Capitol folk in the dark about how life here really is: when Capitol folk come around on Reaping Day and later for the Victory Tour, they film at the Ranches because they look nice and they make the Capitol folk think we've got an easy and good life. They do bull-fighting at the Ranches and have the Victory Banquet there, according to Miss Vetta who _has_ to attend because she is a merchant in Town, Peacekeepers' orders. According to Daddy, what the Capitol folk don't see at the Ranches is the District 10 folk who run them. There's three types at the Ranches: 1) The Cow-men, 2) the Cowboys, and 3) the Ranch-hands. The Cow-men are the folks who run the business at the Ranches and in selling products in the Town. Most Cow-men are rich and fat and smoke a lot and wear big round hats that hide their faces. Most of them aren't tall like Daddy, but are what Miss Vetta calls "squat". In other words, they look like suntanned, clothed bouncy balls. The cowboys ain't all boys; it's just what they're called. They work on the Ranches with the cattle and livestock, herding usually, and breaking in any horses on the grounds. They also make saddle-straps and saddles, leather jackets and trousers, and whips and straps, or so Daddy thinks. But the most important thing for the cowboys to do is be trained to entertain the Capitol folks when they come. They perform fancy rope dances and have large gatherings where they ride bulls. Miss Vetta says she seen them try to do contra-dancing and a few square dances, but then she laughed and said that they ain't got the right steps or music. They train to play music too, but the music ain't their own or ours: the Capitol has to approve of it before it can be learnt, so Miss Vetta says. They also train to stage old-timey sword fighting duels and to be that kind of person who waves a red flag around a circle, I guess, to get an angry bull even madder. Sometimes, Daddy says, they take out their old pistols and perform pistol duels. The least experienced cowboys usually get hurt or die from these performances, and it's all for the sake of entertaining the Capitol folk. No one seems to know how a person becomes a cowboy, or if they do, they ain't saying. But I once asked Miss Vetta if what Daddy said about them was true, and all she did was nod her head and looked pretty grave.

The third type on the Ranches are the ranch-hands. These boys – and they usually are boys – are District 10 boys picked up from the far reaches of 10 for reasons no one knows for sure. They bring 'em back to the Ranches and put 'em to work doing everything that keeps 'em functioning. Miss Vetta has stories from folks who trade with her about ranch-hands. They get fed and boarded in the Ranches, but that's all. Miss Vetta calls 'em slaves, but she never talks about them when Daddy's around. It was ranch-hands that were involved the day Moxie and I got caught poaching. It was a pair of them. I remember it well because they said they were gonna tell on Moxie and get her name put into the bowls more times. Moxie didn't tell 'em her name, but the one who was about her age, he said he'd drag her out in front of the crowds and tell on her. The other ranch-hand looked like he was my age maybe – a little older maybe. Moxie told the older one what she thought about that and then what she thought about him too, and it wasn't any of it nice, but he didn't seem to hear her. There was an awful long pause, and then the younger ranch-hand gave me back my catch – a farm-raised hen! – and he went over and talked a bit with the older one, and when they was done, he'd convinced the older to let us off. They'd say a coyote had gotten in or one of the dogs got loose and killed and ate the kill we'd been poaching. I could see Moxie and the older ranch-hand didn't like this idea, but the younger one and I did. We got away and I was definitely lookin' up that day.

I can still picture the younger boy's face. He was very tan and weathered-looking, but his hair on his head and his eyebrows was like wet straw in color. He didn't look up at me much, except for when he was giving back the hen and his eyes were dark but blue. He had a sharp chin but soft cheeks with high cheek bones, and I thought he had the perfect nose, not too high up from his mouth an' not too low either. When he looked at me, I had to smile at him since I couldn't say anything in that moment. He tried to smile back as we was leaving' and he almost got it off had not the older boy clamped a hand down on his shoulder and said, "Not a word, Thatch, not a bloody word." He was really angry sounding. I kept that name – if it was a name – with me and sometimes just sayin' it – _Thatch_ – keeps me lookin' up and thinking about a ranch-hand who, once upon a time in a kingdom of enchanted folks who was trapped as animals, he decided to give me an' Moxie a chance to live.

Sissy and Elka are always lookin' up too. They're pretty young though and Moxie and Miss Vetta and Dad and – well I guess – and I try to keep 'em lookin' up. Elka gets some bad dreams at night, usually about once a week. She lies next to me in bed and I wake up with her. When she gets scared, I take her outside to count the shining stars or to go look for the fires that the folks outside the fence light and dance around. Or sometimes it helps her to pet the she-mule. She don't mind it. I think the she-mule likes it even. Daddy says he called Elka after an elk he saw pass by once. He liked how graceful and powerful that creature was. He wanted Elka to be like that. Seems instead that Elka's got the shyness of an elk, and some of its sleekness too. But gracefulness? We'll see. Sissy's named for an especially rare plant Dad found once long ago. It's called _mentha arvensis_ , but we call it wild mint. Dad found one once long ago and he liked its taste and its color – the flowers go purple and are big and sometimes bushy-lookin'. On that description, I remember one time I found one too! It was a day when I was out messin' around in the prairie and I seen it after I thought I heard a snake coming nearby. I picked that one wild mint and brought it back to Sissy. Purple is her favorite color so it made her laugh and smile all over, and that made me laugh and smile too. We was lookin' up that day. I never found it again. Miss Vetta says they need water, just like we do. I wonder if there is any over in the canyon where we _know_ there's water. Someday, I reckon, I'm gonna go out to the canyon with Sissy and we're gonna find another one just for her. That thought and the good stories I can think of by Moxie's tellin', and Miss Vetta's kindness and Daddy's smiles, and the deep dark blue eyes and saving grace of that boy possibly called Thatch, they all keep me lookin' up, especially when the happiest day of my year ought to be my birthday, and yet it is not the scariest day of my life, put on repeat every year. I gotta hold onto the things that are making me smile because I have this terrible feelin' that someday soon they'll be all I have.


	5. Chapter 5: Moxie Tyler

CHAPTER FIVE: Moxie Tyler

The television flickers on. We's all holdin' our breath now.

They call him Romulus Cane, and he's the master of ceremonies for the interview shows leading to the opening of the Hunger Games. His hair is a deep black and it's like a mane running from his forehead to his neck. His face is sharp, narrow, powdered grey with hints of electric blue sweeping from the corners of his eyes and vanishing around his cheekbones. He dresses in an understated way considering all the other types of characters they've got on this show, and he's only a little more outrageously dressed than President Snow (who gives me chills with his piercing eyes and his blinding white suit). Romulus Cane has dyed his eyes a matching electric blue to the streaks on his skin. His suit is trimmed in the same electric blue but it is an ashy grey that fades into a deep black like his hair. There's something about him that is very off-putting. The television flickers on as we're eating dinner, which is a fresh catch of prairie dog meat – of which I'm proud – and some of Miss Vetta's cold soup for a hot day. Dad gets up to turn it off, like he always does, but since the Capitol controls our set, his attempts are futile. We _have to watch_ as they parade around the Tributes.

Cane speaks: "Welcome to the 19th Annual Hunger Games!" and the crowd goes wild. Lenox and Striker haven't gotten used to this ritual in five years. I hope they never do. I catch Bess looking at me, and I remember what I said to her last night in bed, when she was asleep. This year the Hunger Games are going to test us all because these Tributes are siblings. Cane continues to speak. We're preparing for the entrance of the Tributes into the Capitol, and the screen behind Romulus Cane is broadcasting the jam-packed circus that leads to President Snow's mansion house. There is a large flag bearing the symbol of Panem draped at the end of the circus where the Tributes in their chariots will finish the entrance. I try to imagine what Flaxie McKay and Seeder McKay must be going through right now. The train took them away as we were leaving Miss Vetta's shop last night. It wasn't glamorous, it wasn't on the big screen at the town hall, it was just the two of them saying goodbye, probably for the last time. Were they scared? Are they scared now?

The entrance into the Capitol works like this: each district will be represented by the costumes the Tributes from them are wearing. Tributes enter the Capitol in the same chariot. The entrance comes during the playing of the anthem. It's a massive spectacle because it seems like the districts begin competing with each other by how they are costuming their Tributes for this opening ceremony. Cane is explaining all this and I'm sort of listening, but I notice for the first time that Lenox and Striker are actually paying attention. I take their hands and lift Striker up on my lap. Outside we can hear that some of the neighbors have pulled their sets out into the common ground and are watching this embarrassing spectacle together. Bess takes Elka outside and Sissy follows, leaving me with the boys. I wish Bess had stayed in here so I could see how she's processing all this, knowing that in a year this could be her or someone she knows. But Bess does things her way. I won't blame her for it, but I make a promise as the musical flourish announces the beginning of the anthem, a promise that I'm going to be more kind and giving of myself to Bess this year. Who knows what will happen this time next year?

District 1 begins the parade entering with outfits of ornate gems and jewelry dropping from their shoulders to their waists like a sash, then some shiny material covers the rest of their bodies in the form of trousers and a short-flowing dress. This is black. They look fierce. The male Tribute is a teenage boy called Dex. I only know that because they recapped all the Reapings last night, and maybe more importantly because its written at the bottom of the screen as the camera shows him. Next to him is the female Tribute whose name is Scyllus. When she smiles, her shiny white teeth look like razors. They sparkle, but they look very sharp.

District 2 is emerging. Since they are known for their engineering, they are dressed in a metallic color and texture. The inside shoulders of both Tributes are bare. They wear silver glitter on their faces and look stern as they wave mechanically to the audience around them. The male Tribute is a good-looking boy, according to Cane, and his name is Knut (which Cane pronounces as K-noot). Beside him is a plain-looking girl Tribute whose name is Flicka.

District 3 enters. They are stealing a lot of the crowd's attention because they are _actually_ sparkling. Their costumes look like electric wiring woven around their naked bodies ( _somewhat_ loosely) and finally it is plugged into the chariot, and at intervals they are all flashing and sparkling. District 3 is known for its manufacturing of electronics. The male Tribute looks like he must be seventeen years old and he is shockingly magnificently strong. I blush because that's a strange feeling for me, but it's hard not to hear the women in the circus go wild in their cheering. He is called Switch, and he wears his string of lights like a toga, slanting across his bare upper body and falling in loose strands covering his private parts. Next to him is a much smaller girl Tribute who is called Curia. I try not to gasp when I realize that she looks like she could be Bess' age. She is wiry in frame and her costume is woven around her like a short-sleeved unitard. I notice how she grips Switch's hand – white knuckled – but has a fierce look in her eyes. I think they are going to be a big hit with the Capitol folk.

District 4 struggles against the reception for District 3, but they are considerably more impressive as a pair. They are definitely closer to seventeen than eleven. Their costumes look like they've been made from seaweed. The male Tribute is called Lutris. He has a stubbly chin and chocolate hair that's been spiked up and looks prickly. He is strong – much like a ranch-hand I once ran into by accident – Lutris' costume is more or less a loin cloth made of seaweed, and his entire upper body is bare and pleasantly tanned. The women like this too. I look at him – plain looking really – and see a different face which makes me scowl. _I ran into him by accident!_ The female Tribute has shocking blue eyes like I can imagine the ocean looks. Her name is Otari and her costume is a tube top covering her bodice, strapless and revealing her muscled arms (also tanned), and a short skirt of seaweed and reeds. She looks ridiculous because her skirt redefines the term "short", but her smile could win her the Games alone. I make a mental note to watch out for them, Lutris and Otari.

Then it's District 5. The disarming thing about these two Tributes is that they have matching heads of shockingly copper hair. As District 5 deals in hydroelectricity and hydraulic engineering, they are wearing costumes of sheer blue fabric that look like water rushing from a dam while also having silver strips woven in that sparkle. These are draped like tunics that are tied with a silver metallic cord at the waist. Neither are outstanding in musculature so they are received with some disappointment after magnificent displays from 3 and 4. Their names are Anawn and Hidra. Hidra's long curly copper hair is flowing freely behind her and she smiles as freely toward a disinterested Capitol audience.

District 6 is very interesting in their costume and make-up. Being a district known for their talents with the arts, they are painted in swirling patterns of many colors. It's a little nauseating to be honest. They are both very skinny with wild eyes. The female Tribute, Tempra, is taller and looks older. Her companion Tribute, Kilin, has wandering eyes. I wonder if they'll make it past the first day. Everyone knows the first day features a bloodbath at the Cornucopia.

District 7's Tributes are wrapped in bark that makes them look strange. It isn't a popular design for an audience that has dismissed them before they've been given a chance to impress. Froe and Labrys are their names, and much about their physique is a mystery as they're completely hidden by their bark wrapping. I think there is something in Froe's eyes, she's the female Tribute, that spells danger, but the cameramen are only apologetic in giving them screen time. Before anything more can be discerned about them, they're gone to District 8.

Districts 8 and 9 go by without too much incident. District 9's Tributes aren't impressive at all, donning blinding white coats over thin blue clothes with deep V-necks and elastic bands holding their trousers. District 8's costumes are patchwork swatches – District 8 is known for manufacturing textiles. They look gaudy.

District 10 arrives and at first we can't be sure what they're wearing. After these elaborate costumes, 10 seems to be dressed very plainly. Perhaps it's hard to tell what they're wearing because it's a costume we've seen often enough. Rather than anything really elaborate or deeply imaginative, Flaxie and Seeder McKay are dressed in buckaroo outfits: blue jeans, leather boots, matching fitted checkered shirts with buttons up the front side, and bandanas on their heads. After some delay, the audience begins to murmur, because suddenly the chariot has seemingly disappeared and in its stead, it seems that a second pair of horses has materialized. Seeder brandishes the reigns that seem to have separated to become a pair of whips, and the false pair of horses bray as if real. It's a nice trick that comforts the Capitol crowd after some successive dull entrances. Seeder is young but not bad-looking. Flaxie is as tall as her brother and she looks rather strong… at least she looks stronger than I remember her being in the Reaping yesterday. If one of us was up there, how would folks see us?

Districts 11 and 12 go by also, and the Capitol folks seem to have had enough with the entrances. They have their favorites, and of course no one can deny that the Careers – the Tributes usually from Districts 1, 2, and 4 – will have a solid support base in the Capitol, but with the lower Districts – Districts 7-12 – costumes and entrances, and later interviews and training scores, are what might determine life or death on the first day and night in the arena. President Snow makes an address welcoming the Tributes and completes his address with well-wishing for them. Just like that, it's over. The television flickers and goes static. Dad turns it off and the twins stir out of their haziness brought on by the mixture of excitement and confusion over what is happening on the T.V. screen. Outside, the Prairie Dogs stir as well, each moving off to their respective huts with words of greeting and general neighborly remarks to each other. Bess and the girls return as well, and the rest of the night seems to pass without much speaking. I take the boys to bed pretty soon afterward, and Bess and the girls get ready for bed themselves. There is a strange moment when I come back into the room and catch Dad staring at the T.V. absently.

I pause and watch him. Then I choose to speak up. "Dad? You awright?" He doesn't seem to hear me at first, but when I start to clean up the dishes, he comes into the kitchen – which isn't much of a kitchen really. He comes into that space with me and leans against the deadwood planks that make up the wall. "Moxie," he begins. "What do you remember of your mother?" I think this is a weird question, so I continue rubbing a ragged soapy cloth over the dishes, thinking of a way to answer him. He beats me to it. "Do you remember anything?" I stop and nod slightly.

"I remember her awright. But, sometimes, she seems distant in my memory, like she's fading." Dad pushes off from the wall and comes a little closer to me. I give him my attention.

"Yeah." He says. "You were so young when she passed." He paused a minute, trying to form the words in his head and bring them to his lips. I waited for him. "I don't expect you to… I mean, it's okay… I mean, what I mean to say is that it's okay for you to let her fade sometimes. But you need to know that she really loved you and Bess and Arvensis and Elka very much."

He looked like he was going to say more but instead, he crossed to the small deadwood plank table where I had propped the washing basin and clay jug of washing water along with the drying dishes, and he reached underneath the table and pulled out a small drawer I never knew existed. It was very small and could almost fit his whole hand, but instead of sticking his hand in, he groped around with his first two fingers and came up with a pretty little necklace. It was a thin golden chain with a heart-shaped charm dangling at the end, opposite the clasp. Even though Dad's fingers were stubbly, he deftly opened the charm to reveal pictures I'd never seen. Two small girls lying asleep and holding each other filled the left side chamber of the charm with two small girls lying side-by-side and laughing into the camera filled the right side chamber. Dad held them up proudly for me to see. "Those two are you and Bess," he said, pointing out the sleeping children. "You were always holding on to each other as little girls. But when you went to sleep, you cuddled Bess naturally, and your momma would just sit by your bedside and watch you two sleep." He pointed to the second picture. "Sissy and Elka. They always made your momma laugh because it took very little to make them smile. They made the old house bright and happy." His voice faltered, so we just looked at the pictures. I wondered what life was like back then. I also wondered what he meant by the _old house_? He closed up the charm and let it dangle between us. "We don't talk much about the family," he said in a softer voice. "They are Townies, and when I moved your momma out here to be a Prairie Dog, they never really forgave me. Not that I could do much right by them." He caught himself and tried to flash me a reassuring smile, but there was no twinkle in his eyes.

"Dad," I said. "Is the family still in Town?" Dad nodded. "Are they the Townie Tylers?" Again, Dad nodded. "So if I wanted to go looking for them, I could?" Dad was hesitant with his nod this time. He looked worried. "Dad, if you took Momma away from the Townie Tylers, wouldn't that mean she was a Tyler?" I think I confused or surprised Dad with this logic because he frowned.

"Your momma became a Tyler. Her maiden name was Scythe. It's a long story why the family broke up and it had nothing to do with your momma marrying me. But her coming out here with me made a lot of Townies angry." He hesitated again but this time didn't continue with his explanation. Instead, he motioned for me to turn around, which I did, and after I had my back to him, he reached around and clasped the chain and its locket charm around my neck. "I want you to keep it now. I've been thinking about giving it to you for some time now, but I think now that you're old enough…" he didn't finish the thought but instead he turned me around and took a look at me. This time the twinkle in his eyes appeared truly as he smiled. "Sometimes," he said almost in a whisper, "I think I see her in you. Your smile… the way you take care of the boys… and Bess…. How you're growing up," he trailed off a minute but kept smiling from his eyes as the corners of his mouth turned down again. "Keep that charm safe, will you?" It was my turn to nod this time. Then Dad did something I'll never forget: he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me tight. I could smell all the smells that made him who he was: sweet and stale scents, dry and wet textures, all of them uniquely him.

I put my arms around Bess that night in bed, cuddling up to her as she slept, nuzzling her hair and trying to feel the warmth of her body beside mine. These were strange and familiar feelings, like I knew them a long time ago but felt like I was relearning them. I remember how I'd told her I loved her the night before, even though she didn't hear me, and I felt like sometime soon I'd have to tell her to her face that she was so important to me. I had to tell her before it was too late. It never felt like we were running out of time, but with the Games beginning so soon from now, with the brother and sister Tributes from District 10 going into the arena against each other, I felt like time – when we had it – ought to be spent wisely.

The next night the television flickered on again. We all knew that the interviews would be full of mixed emotions. Each Tribute got interviewed for three minutes, and Romulus Cane, who had been a rather stoic presence in the Opening Ceremonies the night before seemed to be a completely different person at the interviews. His demeanor changed from a rigid and disinteresting person to a very lively, flamboyant person whose movements were almost as fluid as water. He had exchanged his darker clothing for a vibrant yellow suit and matching yellow streaks in his hair. The theater was packed with a sea of many different colors. In turn, each Tribute's picture was flashed up on the screen behind Romulus Cane. He began with the female Tributes and then interviewed the male Tributes. Scyllus, the female Tribute from District 1, had a strong but gravelly voice and was quick to talk about how she planned to win the Games against a field of Tributes that were woefully unqualified to represent their Districts. It was almost like she was suggesting that this was something we all signed up for. I hated her right away for being like that. Dex, the male Tribute for 1, was strong in his comments but not as brazen as his companion. He thought he had a strong chance to win the Games but hoped that he'd meet one of the other Careers – he didn't use that adjective but we all knew it was that group he was talking about – in the final showdown. Flicka, from District 2, made fun of Dex with biting sarcastic remarks that I didn't entirely understand. Cane managed to soften some of her edges with well-timed jokes, but on some occasions her edges couldn't be softened. I guessed that she had confidence that there were sponsors already committed to her because she wasn't doing anything to convince the audience that she was in any way likable. Knut, however, was a complete charmer and I think the audience was very mollified by him and his easy presence. When Curia got up to be interviewed, Cane was interested in talking about how she thought she and her fellow Tribute would fare against the usual favorites. She did her best but I wasn't convinced she believed they could _both_ make a good show of it. And when Switch got up to be interviewed, the women in the theater went crazy. His voice was a nice gentle growl, not too low to seem menacing but not too soft to seem like a floozy. In the dramatic stage lights, he looked even more handsome than he had the previous night. It seemed that three minutes weren't enough time to spend with him. "Now tell me, before we have to say goodbye for now, do you think you can win these Games, Switch?" Cane asked. The look on Switch's face was one caught between hopefulness and sorrow. "Mr. Cane, I'll go to the arena with every intention of doing my best, and if that means I win the Games, then my best will clearly be _the_ best. But if it doesn't lead me to becoming a Victor," the women around the theater let out a collective whimper, being totally enamored with the boy. He responded with a look of gratitude mixed with regret. "If I should not return a Victor, then I suppose this is our last chance to be with one another, and such a glorious company I shall be sad to part from." He flashed a winning smile that brought down the house. I felt my cheeks burn, and I couldn't say why. Otari was less charming, but Lutris was equally or more charming, causing the women to swoon again and my cheeks burned again – this time for a different reason. I wanted to erase the face of the boy I'd seen and who Lutris reminded me of, but I didn't have that kind of power. If nothing else, I hoped to see him again, maybe, just to learn his name. I was glad when the District 4 Tribute was finished with his interview.

Flaxie and Seeder seemed less hopeful about winning the Games, but the main focus from Cane was on their blood relationship. "Now, I know I was particularly saddened when we all found out that you came here with your sister," Cane said to Seeder, towards the end of his interview. "Walk us through what you were feeling when they called out your name at the Reaping." Seeder swallowed hard and the whole theater swallowed with him. "Well," he began. "I can't remember a time when I wasn't with Flax, even from when I was a kid. We grew up on the plains together and we've been so close. I guess if I was to go to the Games with anyone, I'd want it to be my big sister." The audience responded with cooing sounds. Cane looked pathetic. "And if there was one last thing you could say to your sister, what would it be?" Seeder looked over to his sister behind him and smiled. I felt my heart sink. He faced the audience again and said confidently, "Flax, I love you. There's not much time left and you never hear me say it, so even if this is the last time, even if it's the last chance we have to speak plainly, I'll spend my 'I love you' now, because I do, and I always will." I got choked, looked around for Bess and found her staring at the television screen, a strange look on her face like she was here but not here at the same time. I played with the locket charm in the absence of words. Would I ever be able to tell her I loved her to her face? Or would time take that away from me just like it was taking away these important moments from Flaxie and Seeder McKay?


	6. Chapter 6: The 19th Annual Hunger Games

CHAPTER SIX: The 19th Annual Hunger Games

 _The Capitol_

The morning broke fresh on the city. Evidence of last night's reverie littered the streets, the broken wine bottles in pieces from gutter to gutter, sparkling in the dewy morning light.

Atoka Menzies had not slept at all the night before, and even now she lay in her bed in the Training Center. She turned over the words Romulus Cane had said to her in private the evening before. _Love isn't going to save your Tributes, Miss Menzies. Have a back-up plan._ The truth: even after decent training scores and some high praise around the Capitol for their interview performances, Seeder and Flaxie McKay were nowhere near to having sponsors. In less than twelve hours, she shuddered, they were going into an arena that would probably be the last place on this earth that they saw. Just as soon as one of them was killed, any sentimental moments they'd performed for the Capitol and all of Panem would be silenced with them. She didn't have a back-up plan either. For Atoka, the Games were still too real.

She touched her face and felt Denton's clammy and cold hands on her cheek, she could even see his pale face. _I'm not going to kill you, Ato. You're not going to die at my hands._ He was right, of course. _We're going to get mended and give them a fight to remember, or they can just send in a mutt to finish us off. But I've seen enough of death and I'm not going to cause yours._ Atoka rolled to her side and tried not to think of watching that awful tidal wave looming above them on the center isle. It had been all they could do to rush under the cover of the Cornucopia before that wave broke on them. She lost him for a minute and cried out when the cannon fired, but later, after crying a bit, she'd found him lying on the beach covered in sand and still breathing. She remembered the strain it was on her tired and injured body to pull him back into the Cornucopia as the night fell so he wouldn't be left on the beach. And his last words… Atoka shook her head in a vain attempt to clear it of the memory, but he spoke even from beyond this life. _Tell Rider I'm going to kill him if he doesn't pluck up an' marry Josie Keith_. _An' promise me you'll do 10 proud an' bring 'em home._

"Bring'm home," Atoka repeated to the silence. Her Avox servant tapped lightly on the door and entered, carrying with her a glass of chalky white liquid – protein drink, as Atoka always ordered on the opening day of the Games – and a citrus fruit on a crystal platter. She set these on the side table and went straight away to the closet to lay out an outfit for Atoka. It was a light green dress of sheer fabric with a ribbed golden corset underneath and a matching golden skirt ending an inch above her knees. After the Avox left, Atoka managed to push herself up to sitting position and to force down the fruit and protein drink. She'd wait for her make-up team to arrive and pounce on her before she got out of bed. On the other bedside table was a remote clicker, and she took it now in her empty hand and pointed it at the glass wall to her right. She clicked a yellow button and the morning light of the Capitol fell away as a calmer scene replaced it: a gentle breeze tossed the dull green grasses from side to side, and the aching branches of the Old Fifty Yards Tree groaned as they clapped their fingers together, swaying in the early morning. Atoka sighed.

 _The Ranches_

Deane kicked the lump at his feet as the cock crowed. Slowly, Thatcher rolled over, offered his brother a one-finger salutation and drifted back to sleep. Deane kicked him again. "Git up, Thatch." The fourteen year old ranch-hand threw the saddle blanket off himself, scratched an itch he had every morning, then stood up and grabbed a clean pair of blue jeans. He pulled these on and found a halfway clean shirt to button up, while the cows in the stall beside him lowed as they got up to their feet. Thatcher, however, didn't move. Deane cussed him out in his head but finished dressing and then went to work unlatching the door to the cow stall. Two calves and their mother trotted out and narrowly avoided the lump on the ground that was Thatcher Scythe. Deane Scythe went down a stall and repeated the process, and he continued to do as much until there was a small procession of cattle heading out of the barn and into the ranch grounds. Thatcher was up and stretching when the last pair set out for the great outdoors. Like the twelve year old he was, Thatcher hadn't taken his clothes off the night before and now his jeans and shirt were wrinkled beyond help. Deane cussed his brother out again, knowing later he'd have the extra task of ironing the clothes to keep from facing the wrath of the Cow-men. Mr. Burliss, their cow-man, wasn't treasured for his kindness. Deane would have to forgo his own shower time before supper in order to keep Thatch from another whipping. "Git on, lazy!" Deane kicked toward his brother, who grabbed his hat and staggered toward the barn entrance. Deane rolled up their saddle blankets and straw pillows, fastened them into a roll with the leather belt strap they had won off Gordy the night before and hung the roll on their hook at the barn entrance before heading out to the feeding ground to make sure their livestock – well, Mr. Burliss' livestock in their care – had their share.

In the Feeding Hall, the cowboy foreman handed out their schedules for the day, and today they had a big hole in the center of the page; it was labeled **HUNGER GAMES (mandatory)**. Ranch-hands either appreciated or hated these days when the Hunger Games interrupted their working day. It meant they had to make up the work later in the evening, rather than being finished after supper. No card games would be happening tonight, no rope-making, no stealing out of their barns to flirt with the girls. Tonight, because of the accursed Hunger Games, they'd work until the job was done. Deane dug into his meal of grits, sausage and gravy, and a fresh-made buttermilk biscuit. Tin cups of coffee were being had and inevitably spilled all over the Feeding Hall tables, and men and boys were groaning about the load of work they'd be carrying today. As Deane thought about it, the Hunger Games were a strange thing for ranch-hands and cowboys alike. Of course, everybody had to put their names into the reaping bowls and everybody, _technically_ was eligible for the Games (ages 11-17… well and after Romulus Cane's shocking announcement the night before, now it would be from ages 12-18), but the protection of the cow-men made the reaping of a cowboy or ranch-hand essentially impossible. The Capitol knew that if they reaped too many ranch-hands and cowboys, productivity in District 10 would drop almost to non-existence, which meant the Capitol suffered. No one in their right minds would let that happen – because the Capitol ought never suffer like the Districts – so their names went into the reaping bowls but rarely ever came out of them. Folks said it had happened once and the ranch-hand had almost won. Mr. Burliss had been heard saying, once, "A little hope is effective. Too much is dangerous." In the end, it'd been more than fourteen years since a ranch-hand or cowboy had been reaped out of District 10. The Games became a gruesome joke at the Ranches, and the folk who could be reaped into them become something less than human.

Deane sat mostly by himself. Gordy usually came round to taunt him or Thatch and sometimes it was with his cronies, but for the large part, Deane kept to himself and only bothered anyone when provoked. _We're here to work, not make chums_ , he reassured himself. And this time was a time when he could think and drift away from his physical surroundings. He and Thatch had been here since they were young, though not always with Mr. Burliss. He'd been a rising star at the Ranches, but no one talked about how that had happened. There were plenty of rumors that it hadn't been a clean rise, that there had been quite a bit of sabotage and even some mysterious sudden death accidents in which many cowboys around him fell victim to any number of fatalities. Whatever it was, rumor had it that he'd begged, borrowed and stolen his way to the role of cow-man. When he bought Deane and Thatch, they were working for the meanest cow-man known on the Ranches. Mr. Farnsworth was a fat man, sausage-like fingers and sharp hawk-like eyes. He often carried a whip with him and made surprise visits to the fields to catch any ranch-hands off guard. Several he had whipped to an inch of their lives and some of the cripple ranch-hands were employs of Mr. Farnsworth. On the T.V. he was a completely different person, putting on a kindly cow-man façade and parading his most pathetic ranch-hands around to show how generous he was to all the "small folk" needing looking after in 10. To his credit, he never killed anyone.

Thatch and Deane had been with Mr. Farnsworth since they'd been picked up from the open Plains where they'd been scratching a living off the land. They'd been wandering like the natives in the Wild just following the fence and looking for ways around it. There had been a life that was little more than a flicker in the memory – that dying light of the candle before it putters out for good – where they had lived in the ruins of a city no one remembered the name of: a city in the center of District 10 with an old Frontier fort along the river. For reasons they couldn't remember, the two boys had been forced to leave the city and wander in the open Plains, finding some refuge in various burnt out towns and crumbling cities along the way. One still had a welcome sign from ages past: "Welcome to Texhoma" it said. That was about four years ago, after nearly four years of wandering. Some weeks later, Deane remembered, a band of cowboys had found them on the road outside of Texhoma, they'd questioned them, discovered they belonged to no one and were not from those parts, then had taken them up on their horses and brought them back to be auctioned off at the Ranches. An older cow-man had wanted them first, but he died pretty soon after, _mysteriously_ , and as a dowry for the marriage of his widow, Mr. Farnsworth had taken Deane and Thatch. They were, after all, property.

Two years into working for Mr. Farnsworth, Thatch put them at risk by letting some Prairie Dog girls sneak onto the land and steal a hen and a pair of hares. At first Deane had thought the excuse they'd made was going to save them, but of course that was false and Thatch was out of work for almost three weeks while layin' up in the infirmary. Some woman was called in from the Town, Cordwip they called her, and she nursed him back. He'd done too much to set Mr. Farnsworth back on quota so he'd been sold in the spring auction to Mr. Burliss. Not long after, Deane had managed to get himself sold to Mr. Burliss as well. They were not going to be parted.

Deane had time to think about all this while he worked on his meal. The workday ahead of him and Thatch wasn't going to be bad. They had field duty before and after their schedule read **HUNGER GAMES (mandatory)**.

 _The Town_

Like with other parts of District 10, the day the 19th Annual Hunger Games began rendered studying at school impractical. For Moxie and Bess Tyler, the schedule for the day read as follows:

 _ **9:00-9:45 – Home Economics (Mrs. Tallhart)**_

 _ **9:50-10:35 – Construction I (Mrs. Bulmer)**_

 _ **10:40-11:25 – Arithmetic (Mrs. Gordon)**_

 _ **11:30-12:15 – Construction II (Mrs. Bulmer)**_

 _ **12:15-12:30 – Recess**_

 _ **12:30-7:30 – HUNGER GAMES: DAY 1***_

 _ ***mandatory**_

Moxie figured that Home Ec would be a waste of time because even here in the schoolyard, all anyone was talking about was the Games. Construction I and II might be possible if only because it involved physical work. Arithmetic would be a waste; no one wanted to think about adding and subtracting when the Games were in store, but for those students – and there were a handful – who regarded the Games as an awful time in their lives, Arithmetic might be a great escape. Recess, though, was bound to be a disaster. In the past, overzealous students had attempted to re-enact the most violent scenes of the past Hunger Games' during recess, which had landed several students in bad shape as unwanted Tributes of the schoolyard rendition of the Games. This morning as they waited to be called into the school by their teachers, most of the girls around Moxie and Bess were talking about the Tributes and who they thought would win. Moxie didn't want to talk about the Games, though. She knew that the only reason anyone did was because they were relieved to find themselves in District 10, going to school, rather than in the Capitol likely going to die. She was seriously regretting her enthusiasm from more than a week ago, on the day of the Reaping, when she'd happily and excitedly recalled Miss Atoka Menzies' win in the 7th Games, twelve years ago, as replayed for them each year on this day. The pre-game show was called Prelude to the Games, and it was broadcast differently to each of the Districts. For those who had never had a Victor, the compilation video shown to the Capitol was shown. For Districts like 1, 2, 4 and 7 who'd had several Victors, compilations of their victories were shown; and for 10, it was only Atoka's victory that was painstakingly recapped in highlights footage for the whole of District 10 to "enjoy". Prelude to the Games began at 12:30.

In the middle of Home Economics, Moxie got fed up. They were learning to sew difficult patterns to put patches on torn clothing. Moxie's hands were shaking so much – part from anticipation, and part from their morning ritual on Games days which included going to school without eating. They'd feast later when the mandatory viewing was over, and perhaps they'd be toasting their Tributes who had survived, but with the hunger that gripped her, Moxie shook and stabbed her finger a number of times on accident. At last, she threw down her work and crossed her arms. Mrs. Tallhart ignored her, choosing to focus on other struggling students for that moment. Moxie looked out the window and recapped the previous evening's show in her head.

The highest training scores had gone to District 2: Knut scored 10, Flicka scored 9. District 3 had stunned the Gamesmaker and Panem by posting a 10 for Switch – the male Tribute that the announcers couldn't get enough of, and the one who made Moxie blush whenever his picture came up. The girls in the schoolyard – especially the older ones – were set on Switch winning the Games and were already planning on fighting each other to get a prime spot for him to see them when the Victory Tour came to District 10. That annoyed Moxie considerably because it was all for naught: these foolish girls were forgetting that in order to see Switch on the Victory Tour, two of their own kin would have to die, probably at his hand, first. None of that logic made her stop blushing when his picture came on the screen though. District 4's female Tribute, Otari, placed fourth in the scores with a solid 8; District 8's male Tribute, Gusset, shocked the announcers with an impressive 8, and the surprises continued as the rest of the Careers (Districts 1 and District 4's male Tribute) scored 8s as well. Moxie couldn't look at Lutris when his picture came up on the screen, simply because of how close he resembled that ranch-hand in her memory. _Who was he? Where was he now? Probably eating a full meal courtesy the Ranches._ Her stomach growled. District 10's Tributes, Seeder and Flaxie, had pulled a middle-of-the-pack score of 5 for each, which was worse than District 5 (Anawn scored a 7, Hidra a 6), District 7 (Froe and Labrys scored 6s), and Curia from District 3, who scored a marginally higher 5 than Seeder and Flaxie. But, they were also better than Kilin and Tempra from District 6 and Josamy, the female Tribute from 11 and Tiary, the female Tribute from 12 (scores of 3 each), Phen and Rouge from District 9 and Betel, the male Tribute from 11 (all scored 4s). Inby, the male Tribute from 12, scored a 2 to fall to the bottom of the leader board. Moxie worried that Flaxie and Seeder might have to kill the Tributes from 12 and 11 in order to have any chance, and she knew scores meant one thing but not everything. She concluded her day dreaming with the understanding that she wasn't ready for the Games to begin, nor did she want them to begin, because once they began and ended, her immunity from the Reaping was spent. She shivered thinking about Bess, who was put into the Games unnecessarily this year now that the rules had been changed. She replayed Romulus Cane's shocking announcement from the night before.

 _For almost twenty years, we've seen children as young as eleven years old combat teenagers as old as seventeen years. It has become clear to us that a child as young as eleven stands almost no chance of winning the Games, and yet if given another year to grown and learn and become stronger, we've seen twelve year olds make it all the way to the last four Tributes standing. Because of these years experiencing and experimenting, testing and concluding, President Snow and the Gamesmakers wish to unveil a rule change effective immediately after the first gong at the start of the 19_ _th_ _Annual Hunger Games. Henceforth, the earliest age of entry into the Hunger Games will be elevated to twelve years of age. Likewise, we've seen many seventeen year olds simply overpower their fellow Tributes because of their years of experience, their ability to grow stronger than the rest, and their knowledge of Hunger Games tactics from the older Hunger Games. To increase competition between the older Tributes, President Snow and the Gamesmakers wish to unveil another new rule effective immediately following the start of the 19_ _th_ _Annual Hunger Games. Henceforth, the oldest age of entry into the Hunger Games will be elevated to eighteen years of age._ And until tomorrow, Happy Hunger Games and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Moxie's name was already in the reaping bowls three times, and Bess' was in there once. The odds were _not_ in their favor, come the 20th Annual Hunger Games. Perhaps the odds were _never_ in their favor to begin with.

 _The Capitol_

The hour hand had climbed its way to the 12:30 mark. Atoka was dressed and made up, and she had a moment in the sitting room of their suite in the Training Center to sit with Flaxie and Seeder. In a few minutes, they would be called down to the basement of the Training Center, they would be separated by their make-up teams, taken to a private chamber, lifted into an aircraft, marked with their trackers, sedated most likely and carried off to the arena. Atoka would be escorted from the Training Center to the banquet hall where all the sponsors and District mentors would be mingling over a small feast provided by President Snow. They'd be a part of the live action of the Prelude to the Games airing in Districts 6, 8, 9, 11 and the Capitol. They'd be interviewed on the spot, talk about the chances their Tributes had, talk about how wonderful the Capitol was and how it was an honor to mentor a potential Victor of the 19th Annual Hunger Games, and they'd probably be asked about the new rules. Atoka remembered being reaped at age seventeen, gaining a ridiculously low score in training, being put on an island with five other Tributes and simply making it off the island by what she considered to be sheer dumb luck. How could she say anything hopeful for her own Tributes?

Seeder couldn't sit. He was about Denton's age when Denton went in at fifteen. Flaxie was older and she was seated and almost appeared to be completely still. Atoka took one of Flaxie's pale hands and rubbed it. "You've done so well this week, Flaxie. What happens next is supposed to freak you out. Just keep calm and wait for the gong when you're in the arena. Whatever the arena holds, find something you know how to use – a weapon or even a shoulder pack if that's within reach, and then find someplace to hide where you can see everyone else, but they can't see you."

"What if we're on an island like in your Games?" Seeder retorted forcefully.

"Islands usually have trees. You can try to climb a tree and wait out the initial bloodbath. Make sure you know who is the deadliest Tribute before the end of the day today, okay?" Seeder chuckled sarcastically.

"Yeah, okay, if we're still alive." Flaxie stomped her foot so suddenly that both Atoka and Seeder jumped.

"SEEDER, we can't _think_ like that! We can survive today. Just listen to Miss Atoka and take note." Her voice dropped. "Anyway, this might be the last piece of advice we get." Atoka was preparing something to say when the escorts burst into the room and roughly pulled the two Tributes to their feet, pushing them toward the elevators. Seeder fought initially, but gave up. Flaxie never had the fight in her. Atoka followed them to the elevators and almost got in a farewell over Seeder's panicking and Flaxie's soft whimpering.

"Play hide-and-seek, you hear!" Was all that Atoka managed before the elevator doors slammed shut and the Tributes fell away from her view, shooting downward to the basement. In the suite, again, she collapsed. She had no certainty of their survival. She was no good at schmoozing with sponsors and she had nothing much to work with. But suddenly, her brain snapped into a strange sharp focus. She had to bring them home, no matter how little she had to work with, she had to make it work. One day at a time, she had to convince the Capitol's big wigs that these two, this brother and sister combination from dusty District 10 were worthy of winning their support through the Games.

Flaxie was sharp and smart, and Seeder was vicious in his fighting skills. He lacked strength but he had an overload of grit. He'd be a hard Tribute to count out, if he made it through the bloodbath today. Flaxie would be a good strategist for any team that might form in the arena. She'd be hard to count out if the Careers picked her up because she neither threatened them nor appeared useless to them. She alone could probably keep them alive with her cunning nature, but if she wasn't careful, she'd die before the end. With a new frame of mind, Atoka set to work thinking of how to sell these talents to the sponsors. She had several well versed speeches prepared when her escort arrived ten minutes later. With a winning smile, she followed them out of the Training Center for the last time in the 19th Annual Hunger Games.


	7. Chapter 7: Atoka Menzies

CHAPTER SEVEN: Atoka Menzies  
Back in 10, we used to call them the Glitterati because of how they sparkle and shine in the midst of a mostly dark room. They also seem to be on top of the latest fashion... if I may be so bold as to call this "fashion". My make-up team has changed their styles more times than I can count, but it never seems to phase them like it does me. Obviously they are not Glitterati! I'm such old news now. The folks surrounding me in the banquet hall, however, represent the wealthiest folks in the whole country of Panem. If someone went mad and came in here and shot them all, Panem would crumble. 

Of course, that's just hypothetical: no one in the Capitol would ever think of doing that! It's just so... messy. And it's horrific. Capitol folks can't handle messy and horrific, which is ironic because the Hunger Games they enjoy so much are both messy AND horrific, and yet for them they are just an entertainment spectacle. I wonder what Snow would do if someone did barge in here and let loose with gunfire. Who would run Panem?

I have to immerse myself with these Glitterati who are gorging themselves with champagne and wine coolers, small squares of cheesecake and fondu fountains with cheeses and chocolates. Its all too lavish for me. I prefer the solitude of the prairie where, how did the old song go? "Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. And the waving wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain." And yet... here I am, not there. I spot a few of the fancier gents and make my way over to them, testing to see if I, the woman, can shake up them, the men, by my mere existence in proximity to them. I flash a winning smile and flirtatiously steal a champagne glass from the young man who is closest to me. "Good evening, boys," I begin in a sensually smoky voice. "Happy Hunger Games." I wink at the young man - my victim - and then say only to him, "And may the odds be ever in OUR favor." He chuckles: I've trapped him. I envision taking a cord from around my dress, circling him while taunting him with sweet, sexy words, then when I'm behind him and breathing on the weak spot on his neck, I take the cord and ruthlessly throttle him until he's sputtering and choking on the floor. One down, twenty-two to go. Obviously, these Games are different: killing them isn't the point. 

"Atoka Menzies." He reads my nametag. "Victor, 7th Hunger Games." He looks at me, questioningly. "But you're still so young." I smile.  
"I could be younger. As you might have heard, we reap at age 11. I could be only 23 years old, not..." I smile flirtatiously again. "No. I want you to guess my age." A single eyebrow lift draws him in. The other gents are captivated too.  
"Uh... 30." He tries. I pout slightly.  
"Baby, don't age me so fast!" They laugh. He tries again.  
"Okay, ... umm... 25." I gasp dramatically, giggle and then say, "Nope. Try harder." The last word is exhilarating for him. I know why. He grins foolishly. "27?" He's right. I wag a finger and get very close. "A lady never tells." The other gents laugh in spite of themselves. I get down to business. 

"My Tributes are from District 10. It is quite a tragedy, if you'll remember, that they are a brother and sister pairing. I look at Seeder, my male Tribute, and I see a boy who doesn't look like much. But I know, underneath, he's a scrappy fighter who can kill you sooner that he looks at you. Now Seeder's not a very strong kid, and he's likely not going to go down in the bloodbath, but he needs help going forward in the Hunger Games." They're not all convinced. "I can see Seeder making it a few good days before he has to kill again." They perk up at the suggestion he would kill a first time, and I let them have it. "Who knows what the arena will be? Who knows what he might need along the way? What I know is that the Capitol and Panem **love** a good story, and Seeder is a good story. And I know you know that too. Pledge to support him. He won't disappoint you. And when he wins, with your support, just imagine how you'll bask in his glory!" 

The man considers it (and me) with eyes that sparkle like the deep ocean. His gaze begins to get uncomfortable. I think about taking his head in my hands, stroking his cheek and then strangling him, and maybe I get a little too close because he chuckles and grabs my shoulders firmly, steadying me. "Whoa. Are you okay, Miss Menzies? Drink too quick?" I flash a winner's smile and play dumb. "Oh gosh! I am so sorry!" I giggle. "You got me. I guess someone should cut me off!" He grins. 

"Consider yourself cut off." He hands my champagne glass away as an Avox passes by. When he faces me again, I study his face earnestly. He has a sharp chin and wears glasses. No one wears glasses in the Capitol unless they are making a new fashion statement, and he's not because, shockingly, he looks incredibly ordinary. He had short-cropped black hair and bushy black eyebrows, and the corners of his mouth curl up slightly. He looks young, and he is definitely new money. "So," he continues matter-of-factly. "Tell me more about how my pledge of support for this Seeder kid is going to make me famous and rich when he wins." I've got to admit, I'm a little enthralled with him. He's speaking only to me, clearly: he's lowered his voice to a little louder than a purr. 

"When Seeder wins," I say. "You'll be a part of the victory. You'll be a major name among everyone who is anyone in the Hunger Games." He's grinning wide.  
"Well, don't stop! Go on." I didn't realize I'd stopped until he said so. Now I flip through my arguments on how he will be the most important man in all of Panem when he supports Seeder to his win. I have an idea that achieves two purposes simultaneously. 

"What's your name," I ask. He begins to tell me but I put a finger to his lips and slowly shake my head, making a _shhh_ sound. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I promise you that when Seeder wins with your support, no one will ever have to ask you who you are. They'll know your name by your very presence." I'm whispering only to him. "You'll be invited to every big party and all 'it' social events. Because sponsors who support Victors are like Victors by proxy. And you, whoever you are, will be among them." He grinned again. "So when the Victor wins, I win." I grin, getting dangerously close to him. "Exactly."

"I have to say," he says, "you make some very compelling arguments for your Tributes. But..." _Oh shit_. "I need to think about it and see how they perform today." I nod, my heart sinking. I move away from him. He is still gripping my shoulders so I let myself move far enough away from him so that he knows that I can leave without his leave. I get to an arm's length away and when I pull him, lightly, he takes a step toward me, away from the room. I've felt threatened before – for my life – many times, but this feeling is different. My heart is racing and I want to imagine many creative ways to kill him, but I can't steer my head in that direction, not this time. "Where are you going?" He asks through a smile.

"To find someone who _wants_ to be a Victor." _To find someone who is going to keep my Tributes alive._

President Snow has tapped his glass, signaling the assembly to be silent. I've made as many pitches as I think I can and no one has bit what I've been dangling. The last gent I pitched to decided he would have a better chance declining or accepting based on what I could offer him. At this point, I'm so desperate to have one sponsor that I've made an arrangement with him. I am not pleased that this is the depth I'm steeping to for a chance to win support for Flaxie and Seeder. What more could I have done? That's what I'm asking myself as President Snow steps up and begins addressing us. He's proud to have us all assembled here and hopes that these will be the best Games in 20 years. _I'm sure they'll be the most memorable._ Then, President Snow begins his real speech.

"The 19th Annual Hunger Games will mark the end of the second decade of gamesmaking, and for this year's Hunger Games, we honor the eighteen Victors living among us and the nineteen years of entertainment they have provided for us. This year, we offer a unique arena that has to be seen to be believed. For those who suffered when the rebels stormed through the mountains and into our streets almost twenty years ago, for those who watched their loved ones cower in fear as doors were being kicked down and their family members were being dragged into the streets and shot or worse, for those who had no choice and no voice in the ruthless slaughtering of our people – _these_ memories are what have built this arena. _These_ sorrows have filled its interior. _These_ stolen goodbyes have motivated our gamesmakers to create a Hunger Games that will free the silenced voices of our people in this mighty, this great Capitol between the mountains, so that we may all shout out, 'Oh horn of plenty for us all, when we raise the cry, the brave shall heed the call, and we shall _never_ falter, and we shall _never_ fall'!" The words lead the room to an eruption of applause from everyone, except for me. What about the voices that have been silenced from the Districts? What about Seeder's and Flaxie's voices, should they falter and fall in a few minutes' time? It's over very quickly though, and when the room returns to attentive, President Snow smiles one of his sickening smiles and opens his arms wide as if to hug the room. "Happy Hunger Games. And, as they used to say, let the Games begin." The lighting around the room dims dramatically and behind the podium from which President Snow – now seated – delivered his "moving" address, a screen slides forward while the curtain is drawn – _always a show_ – and the glow from the screen makes some of us blink. It's a countdown by the seconds starting at nineteen. The face of a Victor flashes on each half-second count. It thrills the rest of the assembly, except for those who are Victors. At the 6.5 second count, my face flashes upon the screen, and I wince. I looked so regal back then, even though I was younger and more desperate for the sort of life I have now. The seconds tick down to zero and the screen goes black. Slowly, the words "The Hunger Games" materialize on the screen.

The cameras make a rough transition to the Cornucopia. It is a chic black and smoky grey, and dust gathers at the foot of the horn. There is nothing in the horn, which intrigues the room. It makes me wary. The camera zooms out slowly and around the horn is what looks like the ruins of a city square. My eyes grow big as I realize that this year, this arena, we will be watching an elaborate and deadly game of hide-and-seek. The camera continues to zoom out, showing the arena beyond its ruined city square. Around the square are rows of cement-built apartment blocks. Some are burnt out, others are in desperate need of repair, but on the ground level of each is a shop of some sort. There are six streets leading from the city into the square, and as the camera continues to pan out, we see that each of the side streets leads down a narrow alley to small plazas where four Tributes each are poised on their explosive pods, waiting for their countdown to expire. They're all facing each other. The assembly gasps excitedly at the entire stage these Games are set on. I feel a hand on my back and I turn sharply. It's my unknown victim. He looks at me gravely serious and leans in close to whisper in my ear. "Okay."


	8. Chapter 8: Deane Scythe

CHAPTER EIGHT: Deane Scythe

I hate the bloody anthem, and yet it calls us to stand where we are, caps in hand, tin cups of coffee left to the tabletops. It is the beginning of the Hunger Games, and it is the siren call for some unfortunate Tributes, ill-fated citizens of Panem. Thatch is by my side when the screen in the mess hall flickers to life after the anthem and emblem of Panem disappears. We are panning out from the opening image of the Cornucopia – dressed in a sleek black metal with dusty grey kicked up onto it as a false wind dances through an empty city circle. We are panning from the backside of the horn, so the opening – likely stockpiled with loads of weapons and other killing devices and some food stock – is not in view. The arena is decked out like an abandoned metropolis. There are two long and narrow alleyways leading from the central circus to two smaller circles: one is to our right, the other to our left. There are four Tributes frozen on their pods around each of the smaller circle. To the right are adjoined buildings that are all burnt out – some are smoldering still. The beams of the roofs have fallen in the sad structures and a few walls look like they could collapse soon too. To the left, there are rows of neglected brick townhouses. They're completely intact but each needs a lot of work to be shined up to an attractive gleam. The townhouses and the burnt out buildings encircle their smaller starting circles from where the Tributes are poised and ready to spring. I assume they can see down their alleyways to the large black horn in the center of the city, but as we continue to pan out and up higher, I see how big the arena is and second guess my assumption. It looks like it could be up to 3 miles from small circle to city center, and maybe four miles from the right circle to the left circle. I doubt any Tribute can see beyond their own circle anyway because all the circles are closed in by different types of buildings.

Positioned roughly in the middle of the arena are two more small circles with alleyways leading to the city center. One is on the left, and it is bordered by the shells of three-storey cement apartment blocks. One is on the right, and it is surrounded by equally sad but more intact apartment blocks. In the farthest right side corner is a maze of burnt out five-storey apartment buildings that look like they're all connected to each other. They completely hide what I assume is another small circle with its four Tributes waiting the remaining twenty seconds to spring from their pods toward each other, each building, the Cornucopia: in this arena, I decide, there are many directions to go in, but only one place to end up at: death – somehow, someway, but horrible nonetheless. And finally, in the farthest left side corner, rising high up over the rest of the ruined city are fully intact ten-storey cement apartment blocks. They are garish, grey and intimidating. I assume they also hide the last four Tributes in a small circle we cannot see at this moment. The entire arena, then, is a rundown, burnt out, messy and depressed cityscape, and at the center is the horn of plenty.

The clock runs down in the left hand corner of the screen. _Ten, nine, eight…_ "Seven, six…" some of the ranch hands begin to chant, emotionlessly. "Five. Four. Three! Two! ONE!" We all join in for the final seconds of some sad count of children's lives. Then the air goes out of the hall, silence crashes down upon us; live newly submerged boatmen, we all hold our breaths for the eternity that lasts between the final second and the sounding of the gong. And all Hell breaks loose on the screen. Six different cameras cover all the small circles from where the Tributes begin their Hunger Games fight for survival. In all of them, twenty-four Tributes launch from their pods at once. None of them are armed, but all of them are confused. The second screen features the District 1 female Tribute, Scylla, who has murder in her eyes as she launches from the pod she's on and heads directly for a boy near her. He doesn't see her coming as he sprints toward the alleyway opening directly across from his pod. It's a dramatic but predictable result. Scylla collides with the boy, knocking him to the ground where they slide, she atop him, a few inches. Despite the advantage of taking him by surprise, Scylla appears to be in a rough first fight. Around her and the boy, the other two Tributes in the circle take to the buildings around them and disappear. Scylla is trying to strangle the boy, but he's holding his own. Thatch shakes his shoulder free from my grip, making a face at me. I grab onto whatever is close to me when I get excited. Scylla seems to be gaining an advantage but then the boy flips her over very roughly and she slams her head into the pavement and loosens her grip. The boy jumps free and staggers off toward the alleyway. Scylla sits up and seems to need time to gather herself. Suddenly from the window of the building looking down on the alleyway entrance, a spike whizzes through the air and catches Scylla along the neck, tearing through her jugular vein. Blood spurts from her neck and she cries out like a wounded animal. Another whizzes through the air as she is feeling her first gash. This one catches her in the back near the spine. She arches her back and bellows again. A third whizzes at her, catching her in the shoulder and embedding itself deeply near her muscles. Now her cries are unbearable. The cannon booms suddenly, and I look at Scylla lying slumped on the ground. She's gasping for breath! She's alive!

"Number four! Look at number four!" A ranch hand calls out. We all look at the fourth camera cut-away. It's the camera covering the circle surrounded by the intact but sad looking apartments on the right side of the arena. A female Tribute is being maliciously choked to death with a hefty string of rope by a familiar faced boy Tribute. She's not moving, but he continues to strangle her. Her body is limp, being held up only by his inability to let her go. Another boy appears in the circle with something that looks like a flask. _Where are they getting this weapons and items from? No one could have run all the way to the Cornucopia and back in the few minutes that have passed._ The familiar faced boy drops the dead girl Tribute and quickly knots his rope into a lasso, whirling it around his head like a cowboy… "Well I'll be goddamned! It's Seeder! That's our boy!" One of the ranch hands says, whooping. "First kill, boys! District 10's got the first kill! Woooweeee!" Some others applause and the Games seem to have begun properly in the Ranches of District 10. Thatch starts to clap as well, but I put an end to his applause. "What?" he demands of me.

"Why would you applaud a murderer, Thatch? _Why?_ " He shrugs.

"Because he's one of our boys." The cannon booms again, drawing our attention back to the Games.

"Six! Number six!" We look to the sixth cut-away. The boy from District 3, Switch, is pulling out and cleaning a pair of knives from the boy from District 6, Kilin. _Two dead, twenty-two to go._ I look away from the recent kill and look back to the second cut-away. Scylla is gone, but the boy from District 8, Gusset, is in the circle all alone, painting his face with the blood spilled on the pavement. He's carrying a few more spikes with him. His eyes look crazed. _Where's Scylla? Did she go off to die somewhere more private?_ The boys are whooping again. In the first cut-away, two Tributes have reached the city center and are trying to trip each other before they reach the Cornucopia. The camera works hard to catch them. It swings around as they both dive for the opening of the horn. I grip Thatch again as the camera manages to focus on the opening of the Cornucopia. The other ranch hands voice my own confusion at the sight. "What the…?" "Now, that just ain't right." "The _Hell_? It's f**king empty!" And that it is: the screenshot proves it. The wide open and gaping mouth of the horn of plenty reveals its true nature: emptiness. The two Tributes stagger a minute as they take in the awful truth. Their quest has been futile. Their rewards are nothing. Suddenly, the bigger Tribute turns and pounces on the smaller, screaming a blood-curdling war cry as she strikes at the boy with sharp fingernails, ripping flesh from his face and his hands as he tries to shield himself from her assaults. No one has the energy to speak, even when the cannon booms again in the midst of the fight at the Cornucopia. All eyes are on this battling pair. The gruesomeness of the Hunger Games is settling in, now. Several ranch hands are sitting down now and trying not to look at the screens. We'll see it all later with commentary as the first day is recapped and the dead Tributes are announced. At the Cornucopia, the girl has successfully prized away the boy's hands and is ripping chunks of flesh from his face. He appears to be alive still and I imagine he is moaning, but he's not strong enough to fight her off. After a minute of crazed tearing at his face, she graciously lifts his head with her hands and flattens it on the pavement. We hear the crack seconds before the cannon booms. She continues to smash his broken skull against the pavement until a light from above shines on her and she has top move away. She retreats, licking her bloodied hands, into the darkness of the Cornucopia like a predatory animal, like a crazy bloody witch. The look on her face sends chills down my spine and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. _This is the Hunger Games. I pity the soul who tries to come to the Cornucopia._

The first day is winding down for us, and most of the screen cut-aways show empty circles with pods around them. I'm searching the second cut-away for any sign of Scylla, but there isn't any. As it appears that the action has slowed down, the cameras begin looking for the remaining Tributes. Despite how gruesome the kills were today, I can only count three cannon booms. If I'm correct, this is an underwhelming first day bloodbath in comparison with some of the other Hunger Games. I can't believe I just thought that; these are shaping up to be the… BOOM! The cannon interrupts my thoughts. The third cut-away races down a dark hall toward a figure against the opposite wall. There is something sticking out of her. As we get closer, we see that she's pinned up to the wall by a huge sword, speared through her chest. Her face is contorted, caught in mid-scream. I feel sick.

Out in the Gaming Reserve, the sun begins to set. I drink in the little breeze as it tickles the dry grass at my feet. The new ranch hand, Biter, is with Thatch learning how to check the dugout traps we've set for big game. I can hear them talking about the Games. Everyone is talking about the Games. The mandatory programming ended three hours ago, and it's all anyone is talking about ever since. This is not uncommon for the first day of the Games at the Ranches. Give it a few more days and there will be much less talk. Even for those of us who are not reaped into the Hunger Games, the heaviness of all those Tributes who die each year for the entertainment of the Capitol folks, that heaviness still weighs on us. Thatch approaches me with Biter, and they look like they have something they want to know. I exchange questioning looks with Thatcher. Finally, he breaks the silent conversation. "Biter and me were just talking about the Games, and why it is exactly that we ranch-hands aren't ever reaped into them. You know?" I shoot a very severe look at my brother, one that cautions him _Don't go there_ , but the truth is that I do know why… or at least I think I know why. "Deane?" I nod, sticking some dry grass in my mouth and chewing on it as I think of the best way to describe what I've heard.

"Okay, so it's like this: we're the major trade in this District, and if the Capitol folks just always reaped us into the Games along with the rest of the boys and girls in this District, then who would be around to get all the work done? There _used_ to be really wealthy folk that lived out here before the fences went up, and when the rebellion happened, it was as much against them as it was against the Capitol. Those folks did some pretty awful things, the way the boys talk about it, and some of them are remembered for rounding up all their workers – rebels and civilians alike – and slaughtering them all for the Capitol. It's one of the ways District 10 fell. This is all hearsay though. Who knows how much of it is true? But the way I hear it told is that the Capitol was in a real pickle when it came to punishing the District. Half the Capitol folk wanted to have the Ranches as their places to come and retreat, and since it was only Capitol folks that could travel around outside the Capitol, a lot of them _did_ come here. But the work here and the entertainment was really bad because everyone was being punished for the rebellion, so the Capitol made a deal with the big wigs in District 10: they'd give special protection to the cow-men and their estates from whatever repercussions were enacted on the rebellious Districts, and in return, the cow-men would make sure that the Ranches were run without any glitches and without any further stirrings of rebellion. That meant that the Capitol allowed the cow-men to make judgment upon their ranches and all their workers as they saw fit and when they saw fit."

Thatch snorted. "That explains Mr. Farnsworth and Mr. Burliss." I punch him in the shoulder.

"Anyway, the cow-men took that as an invitation to go looking for orphans and misfits wandering around in District 10, to bring them back to the Ranches and to make them work for their board and bedding." Biter is nodding. "Yeah," I nod with him. "You probably saw the words cut into the entry archway to this ranch, didn't you, Biter?" He looks me in the eyes. "Work to Live. Live to Work." I say it with him. "That's what we're here to do. In return for doing the jobs we're given, we get to live without the threat of being Tributes in the Hunger Games."

"But our names still go in the reaping bowls," Thatch interjects. I nod.

"Our names are still put into the reaping bowls because it would be considered unfair otherwise. But the other kids in this District have their names put in more times than once after their first Reaping. The first year they can be reaped, they are entered once. So are we. Then, the second time, their names are entered _twice_. That makes three entries for a normal kid in District 10. For us, our names are only entered _once_ , making it _two_ entries in two years." I see Biter nodding again. "It's not fool-proof though. The way I hear it, a ranch-hand has just as much chance of being reaped in their first two years of eligibility as any other kid in the District. So we send those first-timers to the Reaping Day like everyone else. If they aren't reaped, the chances that they'll be reaped the next year are considerably smaller. By the time we get to seventeen or eighteen, our chances of being reaped are as good as none. But, it also means that we have to live for our work here, and sometimes that's not much better than spending a few days killing for _and_ running for your lives in the Capitol's arenas."

"I heard that there's a arena somewhere near here," Biter says suddenly. "You know, as I hear it, the Capitol builds the arenas all over the wild parts of Panem, and after the Games, folks pay money to go out and tour the arenas, to see places were their favorite Tributes died or made important kills. It sounds dumb to me, but I was out looking for the arena folks say is near here, and that's how they picked me up." I want him to continue, because talk of the District outside of the Ranches is always welcome to me. But Biter shuts up and there's not a lot I can do about that. So we continue working and talking about what we think the real story is behind our strange arrangement to work until we die as opposed to facing the same fate as the rest of the District.

Later, Thatch throws his dirty socks at me to get my attention. "You think that ranch hands could ever be reaped after their first year, D?" I shake my head; it doesn't seem possible. For once, the odds _are_ in our favor in that regard. The math, if I did it correctly, doesn't favor the majority of the kids in the District who aren't ranch-hands. I shove his dirty socks back at him as we take our seats in the mess hall for supper and the first day recap. "Do you really think that there's an arena near here, D?" Biter is coming toward our table. I shrug.

"I've heard that there are arenas all over the place. If you think about it hard enough, there's got to be almost twenty of them now, and they aren't that big but you saw the arena for this year's Games, and it wasn't that small either." Thatch snorts.

"Sounds like the Capitol to turn those places into tourist attractions." As Biter sits down, the anthem blares from the rejuvenated screen at the front of the room. Biter spills his coffee on himself as we all jump up and remove our hats before the animated image of the Panem seal on the screen, moving in the non-existent breeze. Biter's cussing under his breath. I steal a glance and notice, gleefully, that he's managed to spill the coffee right around his crotch. He can't be having a good time right now. The anthem ends, the seal slowly disappears and we can sit.

Romulus Cane and his commentator companion, Phinehas Gideon – a man who looks very much like an urban bird, and perhaps more so than like a man – appear on the screen, exchanging what they must think are pleasantries with their viewers. Behind them is a live shot of the black Cornucopia glowing eerily in the light of the false moon, while the rest of the arena is swallowed in darkness. From this high angle, the rundown metropolis looks ghostly under the moonlight and the shadowy darkness. The way the light catches the ruins of several of the buildings is very nightmarish, and yet its ghostly power is also beautiful somehow. Phinehas Gideon has a surprisingly low voice when he speaks, which he is doing now.

"Well, well, well, well, well," he claps his hands together animatedly. "The first day of another incredible Hunger Games, and _what_ a _day_ it _was_! Am I right or am I right, Romulus?"

"You are, of course, _right_! Who would have predicted that this would be the lay out for this year's Hunger Games arena?"

"Well, I didn't, Romulus. I did _not_. No sirree. This ghostly city behind us was not what I was thinking of when I thought about the Games this year."

"Now, before we begin with the recap, I want to go back to something that President Snow said in his address during the Prelude to the Games. Let's cut to that footage, what do you say?" We _have_ no say in the matter, Romulus. We're going to cut to it anyway. And we do. There he is, President Snow, standing at a podium, a white rose pinned to the lapel of his white blazer; his snake-like (I think) eyes surveying the assembled audience. "The 19th Annual Hunger Games will mark the end of the second decade of gamesmaking, and for this year's Hunger Games, we honor the eighteen Victors living among us and the nineteen years of entertainment they have provided for us. This year, we offer a unique arena that has to be seen to be believed. For those who suffered when the rebels stormed through the mountains and into our streets almost twenty years ago, for those who watched their loved ones cower in fear as doors were being kicked down and their family members were being dragged into the streets and shot or worse, for those who had no choice and no voice in the ruthless slaughtering of our people – _these_ memories are what have built this arena. _These_ sorrows have filled its interior. _These_ stolen goodbyes have motivated our gamesmakers to create a Hunger Games that will free the silenced voices of our people in this mighty, this great Capitol between the mountains, so that we may all shout out, 'Oh horn of plenty for us all, when we raise the cry, the brave shall heed the call, and we shall _never_ falter, and we shall _never_ fall'!" Phinehas Gideon dabs his dry eyes with a fluorescent purple handkerchief and Romulus Cane takes a few dramatic inhales.

"What a stirring speech!" Gideon offers, standing and applauding the screen. "Well said, Mr. President. Well said!" He sits after his performance has ended. With a massive dramatic sigh, he leans on the table and turns toward Romulus Cane. The screen behind them changes back to the wide angle of the arena, eerily bathing in moonlight.

"Well, well, well, well, well! Shall we get on to the recap of these remarkable Hunger Games?" Romulus Cane nods emphatically with a smile and laughs as Phinehas Gideon turns to the studio audience and raises his eyebrows to extend the question to them. They cheer. Phinehas Gideon sits back down. "Well, well, well, well, well, let the Games begin!"

"We began the day with a shocking revelation," begins Romulus Cane as the screen changes to reveal the empty mouth of the Cornucopia. "Unlike all the other Hunger Games, the usual provisions are not stocked in the horn of plenty _this_ year!" The screen changes to a quick montage of several interior locations in the buildings of the arena.

"Instead, we found out that the usual provisions have been scattered around the arena randomly in the buildings of this city. Isn't that marvellously clever, Cane?" Romulus nods in agreement. "Okay, let's see the first kill of the day." The screen changes images again. This time it is set on the small circle where we saw the first kill earlier. On the upper right hand corner of the screen, the picture of the deceased Tribute appears. She is from District 5 and her name is, apparently, Hidra. On the opposite upper hand corner, the picture of the killer Tribute appears. A small cheer ripples through the mess hall as it is confirmed that the Tribute is Seeder, from District 10. Romulus Cane and Phinehas Gideon take turns commenting on the strangling, which is taking place in the center of the screen, while they watch. Suddenly, the other boy Tribute appears and Seeder lets Hidra go, while preparing to lasso the other Tribute. A chase ensues into the nearest building. Replacing the picture of Hidra in the right hand corner is the picture and name of the new Tribute: Knut, District 2.

"Oh!" Phinehas Gideon squeals as Knut almost catches Seeder around a corner inside one of the buildings. "I have to say, Cane, this was one of the highlights of this first day! This chase between the District 2 and District 10 Tributes was so memorable! Oh!" He shivers and shakes dramatically. "Gives me the chills re-watching it!" Now, I'm wondering if our male Tribute made it out of the first day alive. The chase was not something I remember seeing earlier during the broadcast we watched. Seeder is obviously very quick. He darts around sharp corners and switches his position several times while the much stronger and bigger Knut keeps up with him. It seems that we've all forgotten that Knut had a flask in his hand until, looking out of breath, he stops chasing and unstoppers the flask. Phinehas and Romulus gasp in tandem. Knut tosses back the contents of the flask, gulping them down greedily. He wipes his sleeve across his mouth and throws the flask down on the cement floor. It shatters. But he's making a face now, and it isn't one of contentment after slaking his thirst. His arm is still at his mouth and his eyebrows are furrowed. He's looking a little green in the face too. He sniffs, then his eyes go wide dramatically. Suddenly he takes two fingers and shoves them deep down his throat, and seconds later he is vomiting the entire contents of his stomach out the nearby window.

"Little did he know that one of the items hidden in the arena looks and smells like water, but instead it is poison." Cane narrates. Knut is puking his guts out.

"Oh! Look! Look!" Gideon is jumping up and down and pointing to the figure of Seeder creeping out from the shadows of the hallway into the open behind Knut. It seems to take all his effort, but Seeder manages to lift the vomiting Knut up over the lip of the window and shove him over the side! We watch as Knut lands in the pile of his own sick and lies still. "Dead? Not dead?" Phinehas Gideon can hardly contain himself.

"Spoiler alert, for those who missed it," Romulus Cane interjects. "Knut survives, but we now know that this boy Tribute from District 10 is not to be messed with." The camera zooms in close up on Seeder's face. I can see it in his eyes too: he's gone mad.

We watch the fight between Scylla and the boy Tribute from District 5, Anawn, while Phinehas Gideon and Romulus Cane animatedly comment on it. Then we discover the Tribute throwing the spikes from the nearby window: it's the District 8 male Tribute, Gusset. Each strike elicits a boisterous "OH!" from Phinehas Gideon. We watch as Scylla recuperates and then runs off into a nearby building. She nearly runs into another female Tribute who is lurking quietly in the shadows. We find out that she is from District 12 and her name is Tiary. The camera cuts to Scylla, trying desperately to remove the spike from her back, then zooms in as she slumps over and finally lies still in a pool of blood. _So she died._ There are comments being made about this "shocking" death, but I don't hear them. We move on. Switch – from District 3 – stabs the District 6 male Tribute (Kilin) to death. Then we see the awful chase and skewering of District 9's female Tribute, Rouge, by the menacingly powerful Dex, District 1's male Tribute, by throwing a sword at her as she stumbles through the hallway. Dex does not come back for the sword, and we follow him as he retreats to an empty apartment where he's amassed a huge store of long and short swords. We leave him for the final kill, which I choose not to watch. It is the ill-fated race to the Cornucopia that leaves District 9's male Tribute Phen bloody and broken, his face clawed to bloody shreds by District 2's female Tribute, Flicka. The final harrowing shot is of Flicka licking her bloody fingers as her figure slowly disappears into the gloom of the cavernous hallow of the Cornucopia.

"And that's it for the first day," sighs a clearly exhausted Phinehas Gideon. "Here's the list of the dead." They appear on the screen behind him: Hidra, District 5; Kilin, District 6; Scylla, District 1; Phen, District 9; and Rouge, District 9.

Thatch tosses his dirty socks at me from his bunk in the boarding house, hours later. I make a one-fingered gesture at him. "D," he whispers.

"What?"

"I can't sleep." I roll my eyes. Sometimes this happens. Sometimes Thatcher can't sleep after a recap of the Games. Sometimes, when this happens, I let him come and sleep next to me so that if he wakes up screaming, I'll wake up too and hold him. In the morning, I'll kick him out to his bunk so that the boys don't talk. But for now, I sigh and throw back my saddle blanket.

"Okay, Thatch. Come on." He's very quiet and very quick to scramble down from the bunk to lay beside me. As he snuggles in, I hear him heave a sigh.

"Thanks Deane." I cover him over with the saddle blanket and shift to my side so we'll both fit on the bed. As I hear him begin to fall into sleep, I put my arm around him an kiss the back of his head. He tugs at my arm, pulling me up against him so that I'm fully hugging him. I'm okay with it, but I won't admit that to him or anyone else, except for my future wife maybe someday. He sighs, yawning sleepily. The words are on the tip of my tongue and I'm ready to say them, except I can tell by his breathing patterns that he's already descending into sleep. So, in the absence of words, I hug him closer, my little brother, and kiss his head again. _I can sleep now that you're here_. And I'm sure that pretty soon I am.


	9. Chapter 9: Moxie Tyler

CHAPTER NINE: Moxie Tyler

"What do you think it feels like, Mox?" Bess asks me as I'm braiding her hair for school the morning after the Games began. She turns her head to look up at me and it messes up the tight braid I'm weaving into the side of her scalp. I make a face at her and she sticks her tongue out at me before adjusting her head. _I love you, Bess_.

"What do I think _what_ feels like?" I ask, continuing to work the three-strand braid in a pattern that Miss Vetta showed me; it's just a basic weaving pattern, really, but with two braids forming on either side of Bess's head, then meeting in the middle of the backside of her head and merging into a pretty four-strand braid, the simplicity of it is what makes it look so elegant.

" _Dying_! What do you think _dying_ feels like! That's what I meant." Bess giggles as if everyone in the room knew what she meant except for me. It's not a cruel suggestion, her giggle. I shrug.

"Why do you want to know how dying feels?" She shrugs. "How do _you_ think it feels?"

"Ummm," she hums. "Probably it hurts more than a pinch but less than a cut. Unless you're being cut to death like District 6 yesterday. _Then_ I bet it hurts a lot more than a pinch." Lenox hears the word "pinch" and he comes bounding over to Bess and me, sticks out his two pinching fingers and pinches my wrist. He tumbles away laughing when I make an angry face at him.

"PINCH!" he shouts happily. Striker bounds over to Lenox to see what's so exciting and if he can get in on the fun. I'm about to scold Lenox but Bess does it instead. "Lenox Tyler! That wasn't very nice. Say you're sorry to Moxie." Lenox and Striker merely look back at Bess trying to imitate her face. In truth, they're really funny kids making some pretty funny faces, and in truth I want to laugh at them, but I think that would completely undermine what Bess is trying to teach them.

Bess has been really good with them lately. Dad leaves for work in the early morning, but not before he's able to get some food in a pot on the fire for us. We don't usually see him until close to sunset. He's never really said what his work is, but he's always really tired when he comes back and I feel like I should know what he does, but I have to concede that I don't. Folks in the Town seem to know him when he's there, but he's always said that's because of the Townie Tylers. I haven't had any reason not to believe him before, but it is a nagging voice in my head. Anyway, it doesn't really matter what he does for work because he's always here when we need him. Preparing for school in the morning isn't one of those times. Still, the chain of care-taking, most mornings, begins with me taking care of making food for everyone and styling Bess's hair, then continues with Bess taking care of waking Sissy and Elka so they're ready to go when breakfast is ready, and then also going and taking care of the twins if they're with us (because sometimes Dad will ask a neighbor to take them, like on days when we're going to have a test and Bess and I need to stay calm). It works for us and we've got the pattern of the day down really well. Almost on cue, Sissy and Elka appear from the small bedroom we girls share. They're ready to take the trek into Town for school. Sissy yawns and the twins break eye contact with Bess as they bound to Sissy, fingers extended and ready to pinch her too. Striker takes the divide-and-conquer route by heading over toward Elka. Luckily Elka is prepared and scoops him up, kissing his forehead and narrowly escaping a pinch. Sissy isn't so lucky.

"OUCH! LENOX!" She pushes him hard. "You're so annoying!" She grabs her bag and swings it at Lenox as he bounds back after her. "STOP!" I hear Bess sigh heavily, and I see her shoulders slumping. With quick, deft fingers, I finish braiding and weave a hair-band around the tip to keep it in place. "All done," I say to her in a soft voice. Quickly, she's up and breaking up the fight developing between Lenox and Sissy. Elka brings Striker over to me and I take him in my arms and hug him. He's less of a nuisance than Lenox. He gives me a kiss on the cheek.

"Moxie, Moxie, foxy Moxie." He chants. I think he picked it up from Miss Vetta's or maybe from the neighbors, who also have a five-year old. It's just a rhyme and it doesn't mean anything to me, but it has this magical power to distract Lenox from what he's doing (right now, that's trying to pinch Bess and Sissy while ducking Sissy's swinging bag) and to get him to chant along with Striker. Soon, they're both chanting, "Moxie, Moxie, foxy Moxie. Moxie, Moxie, poxy Moxie. Moxie, Moxie, crocksy Moxie. Moxie, Moxie, foxy Moxie." It's cute, until Striker decides to change the words. Lenox hesitates a moment while Striker changes the rhyme, but then he joins in again. "Bessie, Bessie, messy Bessie. Bessie, Bessie, dressy Bessie. Bessie, Bessie, lessy Bessie. Bessie, Bessie, messy Bessie. Sissy, Sissy, pissy Sissy!" Sissy launches at Lenox, who giggles and dodges her. Bess catches Sissy and steers her out of the hut. I let myself laugh at the entire episode.

"Do you think anybody died last night in the arena?" Bess asks me as we walk toward Town. I make a questioning face at her.

"What's up with you and this morbid interest in death?" She smiles and shrugs. "Well, like Miss Vetta says, I think we've seen enough death around here and we don't need anymore." Bess nods, content enough with my answer. A few minutes later, though, she asks another question.

"Do you think Miss Atoka Menzies was able to save Flaxie and Seeder by getting them sponsors?" I have to shrug on this one because I don't really know. I've never thought about what Miss Atoka does during the Games. I always assumed she would be in the Capitol getting sponsors for our Tributes, or maybe she's just in the Capitol watching the Games and staying out of sight. Since no one from 10 has had much success in and out of the Games except for her, I'd say she's not very good at getting sponsors. But I can't presume to know what she is and isn't good at regarding the Games. Maybe the success rate of District 10 has nothing to do with her at all. I can only imagine how I would feel if it were me who was trying to get sponsors for an event that I didn't believe in. _I'm not sure where that thought came from but I guess it's true_. Besides, we've not yet seen where Flaxie is in the arena. All we know is that Seeder was the first Tribute to make a kill. I guess that's not as shocking when you think about how transformed you might be when you're consciously and constantly fighting for your life.

"Well now," I begin. "I don't know what Miss Atoka is doing, but I think that we don't have any sponsors yet because we don't know where Flaxie is in the arena… not _yet_ … and it looks like Seeder is aware of how to keep himself alive. But I bet you that Miss Atoka gave them some advice on that train about how to stay alive."

"They probably learned some things in training too," Bess adds."I wonder if we ever ran into them without knowing it during our school days when they were here. Did you recognize them at all, Mox?" I shake my head.

"District 10 kids all start to look the same to me after a while. Usually in the middle of the year I can't tell anyone apart really." Bess chuckles and nods.

"Yeah, I guess me too." We get quiet and less enthusiastic as we spot a Peacekeepers' motor car parked on the side of the road about ten yards ahead of us. It looks like the Peacekeepers are sitting on the hood, too, passing something between the three of them. As we get closer, the air smells different: sweeter, at first, but then really foul. I think it's coming from whatever that thing is that they're putting to their lips and blowing smoke from. But the closer we all get to them, the less we're inclined to look up at them. Now that the Games have started, the presence of the Peacekeepers in District 10 is really menacing. We're practically passing right by them now and I have this uncomfortable feeling like they're looking at us girls – _us_ girls in particular – as we shuffle by them. Bess and I keep our heads down and our eyes straight forward for about ten more yards after we've passed them, and just when I think it's okay to go back to normal, we hear them suddenly start laughing. It sets me on edge. Then, miraculously, Bess slips her hand into mine. The last time she did that, she was on edge at the Reaping.

"Hey, Bess," I struggle to say, feeling the words catching in my throat. She looks up at me expectantly. "I bet we'll answer all your questions at school today." She frowns. "What's up?" Bess shakes her head.

"I just had a weird picture in my head." She looks up at me. "Do you remember that time when we were out poaching on the Reserve and we got caught by those two ranch hands?" I nod, the image of the older boy coming to mind immediately. "I think, other than you, that boy, Thatch, was the nicest person I've ever known." She sighs heavily. "I can't imagine killing someone like him. Maybe that's how Miss Atoka Menzies felt when she and Mr. Denton met on the center island in the Games she won. Maybe what she really wanted wasn't to kill him but to save him." She falls quiet. I think about how awful it might be if ever two of us were reaped into the Games together and how I would rather die at the hands of my sisters or brothers than some ruthless killer who is only killing me so that they can become the toast of the Capitol and can live happily ever after. "Maybe Flaxie and Seeder have found each other and that's what they're doing: keeping each other safe."

School is annoying. Anything that isn't about the Games, which we'll gather to watch at 12:30 again, seems to make no sense. It's all about the Games: in the hallways, in the schoolyard, in the cafeteria. No one talks about anything else but the Games. Most of the girls are talking about the Tributes Switch and Gusset. Most of the older girls are talking only about Switch, and even the teachers seem to be talking about the Games. Everyone is talking about it. I have to say, though, that when I overhear the teachers talking, it's not about how gorgeous Switch is or how frightening Flicka is, how thrilling it was when Knut was pushed out the window or shocking it was that Scylla – a Career – was one of the first to die. Instead, they talk about how they knew Seeder and Flaxie. "He was such a smart kid, it's really too bad." "She was always thinking about the next step to any problem we put to her." "I can imagine him being violent, but never like _that_." "She could have made something of herself." Finally, after Arithmetic, I hang back and wait for Mrs. Gordon. She's a squat woman, lean but not unkindly, with copper hair and a motherly look if ever I knew one. She notices me waiting right away. It's 12:15, and I should be heading out to a fifteen minute recess, but I'm here instead. She fold her arms and sits on the edge of her desk.

"Yes, Miss Tyler. What can I do for you?" I take a deep breath.

"Did you know Flaxie McKay?" She holds my gaze, her own growing colder by the second.

"Yes."

"How old is she?"

"Sixteen."

"And did you know Seeder McKay too?"

"Why?" I shrug.

"I'm just curious about knowing who is dying for us." Her gaze changes, which makes me more curious.

"Why do you think they're going to die?" I shrug.

"No one makes it out of the Games from District 10." She softens.

"With that kind of attitude, no one will. But you're wrong, Miss Tyler. Miss Atoka Menzies made it out." I nod, but slowly.

"So did you know Seeder?" She shakes her head. I can't help but feel disappointed.

"Anything else, Miss Tyler?" I begin to shake my head but stop myself, thinking about Bess's question to me this morning.

"What do you think it feels like to die?" I see Mrs. Gordon's eyes go big for a quick second.

"Why?" she asks slowly, drawing out the word. I shrug.

"Bess wanted to know and I couldn't give her an answer because I _don't_ know. But she thinks that it hurts less than a cut and maybe more than a pinch." Mrs. Gordon studies me for a few uncomfortable minutes.

"Bess wanted to know? Well, I don't think anyone really knows but those who are dead, and they're not rushing back here to tell us."

"Do you think dead folks go someplace after they die?" I ask before I can really think about what I'm saying. Mrs. Gordon has a funny expression on her face, one that seems to reflect her remembering something from a long time ago (maybe). She doesn't seem like she's going to answer, so I pluck up the courage and say whatever comes to my mind first. "I think they do, but I don't think it's too far from here." Mrs. Gordon's expression changes again, but this time she's definitely here with me and not somewhere else.

"I think you're probably right, Miss Tyler. Think about it with numbers. What do you think happens to a number when it is subtracted from another number? Like, take 24 as one number, then subtract 5 from it. The result is 19, but what happened to the number 5? Where do you think it went?" I shrug.

"I think it just disappeared, honestly."

"Okay, but if I were to take another 5 and add it to 19, it would bring the number back to 24. Do you think the first 5 is recovered because the second 5 was added?" I'm not sure I follow her, but I have an answer ready.

"I think the two 5s are separate from each other, and the only thing they do is change the 24 from 24 to 19 and then from 19 to 24 again. I think that's how the Capitol relates to the District during the Hunger Games." I let that last bit just fall right out of my mouth before I could catch it and shove it right back in where it came from. But it's out there, and the look on Mrs. Gordon's face now is the strangest one I've ever seen in my life. It's a hard one to describe, so I'll just say that it makes me take a step back and say, "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that." But Mrs. Gordon takes a step forward toward me and her expression changes to something calmer and softer. I feel like she's looking at me in a new light. I don't know what that light could be or might mean.

"Don't apologize, Moxie. We call what you're doing _reasoning_ and _logic_. You're taking a problem you aren't able to solve right away and you're applying things you do understand… or understand better… and you're substituting them for things you don't understand as well. Flaxie did that too." She almost smiles at me. "So, if the relationship between the Capitol and the Districts is like the relationship between 24 and 5, describe to me what is happening when 5 is added to 24, which obviously makes 29." I think for a minute.

"Okay, say that the Capitol is acting strange and decides that instead of taking Tributes _from_ the Districts, they decide to _give_ Tributes to the Districts. Suddenly there are more folks in the Districts because we've been given them by the Capitol. But that's still a subtraction problem because those folks are also taken _from_ the whole number they came from. The Capitol has _less_ in this equation than the Districts, who have more now. So Panem would be different as the number 29 than as the number 24." I'm confusing myself now, or I'm on the verge of confusion. Mrs. Gordon stops me anyway: _she's_ smiling.

"What you're saying, Moxie, is that the relationship we're most used to with the Capitol is a continuous subtraction problem. It might be insignificant when it's only a subtraction of 2 for each of the 12 Districts, and that's clear when you see that the relationship of subtraction is only between the Capitol and each District individually. _But_ , if you put all the Districts together and subtract 2 from each of them, what you see is that 24 is a bigger number than 2, and that the relationship between the Capitol, which subtracts nothing from its number or adds nothing to the Districts' numbers, and the Districts, which never add to the Capitol's number but are greatly subtracted from by the Capitol, is unbalanced in what we call 'give and take'. Do you see that?" Honestly, I think I know what she's saying, but I'm not sure I understand. So rather than answer, I just look at her. "Okay," she says. "Here's another problem. What is 13-1?" That one is easy.

"12." Mrs. Gordon smiles and walks over to the dingy blackboard. She picks up chalk and draws thirteen circles in random spots and then draws a star on the left side of the board near three other circles. She looks at me.

"13-1=12," she repeats as she numbers the circles randomly. Then she draws a dotted line across the board from the star to circle #13 and at the end of the dotted line, she crosses out the thirteenth circle emphatically. "13-1=12. Thirteen Districts rebelled. The Capitol subtracted District 13 from Panem, so now there are twelve Districts. But there's a problem here still. I look at this problem and I see that of course we can't argue that 13-1=12 or that there are only twelve Districts in Panem now after the rebellion ended. But what is missing is the force behind the equation: the Capitol isn't represented in this subtraction equation other than to be the force behind its existence. So what we need to do is adjust the equation so that we are not looking for how many Districts there are in the nation of Panem, but what is the Capitol?"

"Wait," I say, feeling like something in all this mess is actually clicking. "So the Capitol isn't a District?"

"What is the Capitol? That's what we're trying to solve." She writes a big "C" on the blank space on the board. Next to it, she draws an equals sign, so it reads "C=". Then she writes, "12?" on the other side of the equals sign, so it reads: C=12? She looks at me. "Does the Capitol equal the 12 Districts?" I shake my head. "Okay, so then we have to find what the Capitol equals, and we do it like this." She writes the equation again: 13-1=12. Then she puts a plus sign after the "12" and writes a "C". Now the equation reads: 13-1=12+C. "The original thirteen Districts are diminished by one to equal the current twelve Districts plus the Capitol. If we want to begin looking for the value of the Capitol, you need to get it on a side by itself. So here's what we do." She blocks the changes she's making to the equation from my sight. When she stands back, I furrow my brow, still both confused and not confused. The equation has changed to look like this: -12+(13-1)=(12-12)+C. Mrs. Gordon explains, "We have to subtract the whole number from each side so that the value we're looking for is the only thing on its side of the equals sign. See? Subtract the twelve Districts from one side to leave just the Capitol. Then add the negative value of the twelve Districts to the other side. So, tell me, Moxie Tyler, what is the sum of negative twelve plus the difference of thirteen minus one?" I do the equation in my head and simplify the equation by changing 13-1 into 12. Now the one side is -12+12. I gasp as it makes sense. -12+12 is the same as 12-12, and the difference of 12-12 is 0. Mrs. Gordon smiles as I get to the conclusion, and a chill runs up and down my spine. If C represents the Capitol, and the equation to find the value of C is C=12-12, then the value of the Capitol is….

The bell rings, signaling the end of recess. We have less than five minutes to assemble in the cafeteria for Day 2 of the Hunger Games. I can't break the staring contest Mrs. Gordon and I am engaged in. If what I think she's saying is true, the very mention of such an equation could put her in serious trouble. It could put _me_ into very serious trouble! I deeply regret sticking around to ask her any questions about Seeder, Flaxie, the Games… _all of it_! But the gravity of what she seems to be communicating to me bears other fruit as well: what if she's right? What if the value of the Capitol is nothing? What would that make the Games equal to? Some trick by a valueless Capitol to make us feel like we are worth nothing rather than recognizing that their value is worthless? I don't want to think this anymore. I don't want to think this anymore. I don't want to think this anymore.

Mrs. Gordon breaks the silence. "We should go to the Cafeteria, Miss Tyler. The Games will be starting again soon."

Day 2 starts with several shots of where the remaining Tributes are located. There are six cutaway screens on the big screen, each for a different zone, numbered 1-6. Zone 1 rotates from Josamy (District 11 female) who is out in a courtyard of dead grass and grease stains on pavement, to Switch – the older girls get all giggly, annoyingly – who is inside one of the beat-up but intact townhouses, hoarding a lethal stash of knives and axes, to Froe (District 7 male) who is also in one of the beat-up townhouses but without any supplies. Zone 2 rotates from Curia (District 3 female, whose previous whereabouts were unknown) who is in one of the burnt out apartment buildings hoarding a healthy stash of food supplies and seemingly discontent to leave her hiding place, to Notch (District 8 female, also previously hidden) who is hiding in another burnt out apartment building with a substantially smaller stock of food, to Flaxie (we've finally found her in the arena!) hidden in yet another burnt out apartment building with a very sizeable cache of food. A little shout of joy ripples around the room as friends and familiars see her for the first time since the Reaping. She appears to be making inventory of what supplies she has, and as I take stock of what she has to work with, I get nervous as I see that all she has _is_ food. She's not going to be able to kill many Tributes with food alone. Mrs. Gordon mentioned that she was a clever girl though; maybe she'll figure something out? I hope so. Suddenly I want to see her and Seeder make it to the end of the Games.

Zone 3 rotates from Knut (District 2 male and another apparent girl-pleaser) who is in a different courtyard looking through windows. He isn't carrying any weapons that I can see, but he's definitely scouting out the territory around him. He is limping a little, and I suppose that's because he fell out of a three-storey window the day before. His clothes also look like they've crusted over from him falling in his own pile of sick. Zone 3 also focuses on Labrys (District 7 female) who is hiding in a rundown apartment building with a decent amount of food and something shiny and metallic at hand; as far as I can see, it's only _one_ shiny and metallic thing, but that's better than Flaxie; and it focuses on Seeder, who is in another rundown apartment building with his bloody rope at hand and a small cache of food that looks untouched. With the amount of food he has, all he needs is to burrow here and wait out the other Tributes. He could probably make it a long time if he doesn't overeat and if some of the Careers don't find him. It strikes me then: this is one massive scale and elaborate, deadly game of hide-and-seek! I shiver. Zone 3 also focuses on Betel (District 11 male) who is hiding in a different building than Seeder: it's much bigger and seems to be crumbling more than being rundown.

Zone 4 focuses on the other side of the arena where Tiary (District 12 female), Inby (District 12 male) and Tempra (District 6 female) are all hiding in various buildings. Tiary is in one of the really tall apartment block buildings with a cord of rope and a small pile of stale-looking food. Inby is in the shell of an apartment building with a lot of items at his disposal: a fishing rod and baiting hooks, a glass gallon jar of milk, a water bottle and a few loaves of bread. I'm not sure what he'll be able to do with the fishing gear, but perhaps if he's inventive he can figure something out. Tempra is also in the ruins of an apartment with very similar items to Inby, but additional items she has include a full wine bottle, a few rinds of cheese, and a pitcher of water, I think that's what is in it. In the background of her location is the city center and the Cornucopia. I shiver thinking about the animal lurking in that cave.

Zone 5 rotates focus on Dex (District 1 male) and Otari (District 4 female). Dex is inside one of the large three-storey apartment blocks with a cache of the flasks we know contain poison, but he also carries with him a long sword on his back and a short sword in a scabbard attached to his belt. Otari is outside of the large ten-storey buildings, and she carries with her nothing. And in Zone 6, only Anawn (District 5 male) hides inside one of the large ten-storey apartment blocks with a small cache of food (it looks stale) and a healthy pile of maces. This is the set-up for the second day of the Games. Tributes are moving around the arena, as they see fit. Otari is looking for a way out of where she is, I think, because she keeps looking around each corner quickly and stealthily. Knut limps around the buildings in his zone. He lifts himself up and over a low window sill and disappears into the building. The camera does not follow him. In all estimates, this is a boring day of the Games, and we'll have to sit through five hours of it. If anything happens, today in all honesty any sort of kill will be entertaining, even for me.

And then it happens! Though some of the buildings are smoldering anyway, we see some smoke rising from the buildings in Flaxie's zone. Then, slowly, the dancing red, orange and yellow fingers of an electric fire appear over the rim of the building. They're on fire! And just like that, the entire building explodes in the center of the alleyway, fire roaring from its carcass. There are screams and we see Curia, aflame, running from her hiding place. Josamy spots her and freezes. Curia is definitely burning all over and she's heading directly toward Josamy. The cannon booms, but it's not Curia, who is still running into Zone 1 from Zone 2. Curia zips right past Josamy, who moves out of her way and lets her collide with the wall of the nearest townhouse. Curia is going fast enough that she smashes through the window of the townhouse and falls onto a large shard inside the house. There are exposed wires inside the house that trip her as well, and I watch with some glee and a lot of horror as the wires also catch fire. The flames hiss up the wires and ignite with the wooden wall. Now the townhouse – which I think looks a little like the houses built for the Victor's Village (and that's ironic) – has diminished into a wall of flame that's quickly climbing to the roof of the house. It's quite a spectacle. The camera returns to focus on Curai, who is just lying still on the floor of the townhouse, burning away. Finally the cannon fires. In all the excitement of the fire, Josamy has finally decided to run away from the burning building, and we watch horrifically as Switch appears with an axe in his hands at the same moment as Josamy runs by his hiding place. They see each other and Josamy screams, running back in the direction she came from. Switch takes off running after her and the chase makes a few zig-zags as Josamy attempts to run away from both the axe-man and the fire. Switch picks up on her pattern and begins to move in ways that will cut her off. He closes in on her as her screaming and sobbing force her to slow down, and finally, she gives up in the middle of the courtyard she began in, with one exploded building aflame and several townhouses in a row now aflame also, and heaves an awful scream and sob as Switch bares down on her. He must know where the camera is because when he swings the axe above his head and brings it down on her defeated body, we don't see the kill: he's blocking it from view. He can't block out the awful scream as he lifts the axe above his head a second time and brings it down quickly and fiercely. Josamy's screams end abruptly and the cannon Switch steps away from his second kill, he turns so the camera can catch him in profile while also catching the body of Josamy, hacked in two pieces. His chest is heaving as he tries to catch his breath, and he looks like he's closed his eyes. He tosses the axe away from him and drops to his knees, leaning over Josamy's broken body, and he kisses her! It takes everyone by surprise. Then he closes her eyes. We see this close up. He kisses her again and closes her mouth, smoothing out her features so they are not contorted in terror and panic. He has to move away from the two halves of her body as the Capitol aircraft come to collect her. But he stays there watching her as she is collected and taken away. When the craft has vanished again, he puts his head in his hands and I think he looks like he's weeping. I'm reminded of the equation Mrrs. Gordon and I came up with more than twenty minutes ago, and as I look at Switch (possibly) crying over his last kill, I think that this equation might have more truth to it than I thought. Maybe the Capitol really does equal nothing. Once the districts have cancelled each other out, all that's left is the nothingness that is the Capitol. In essence, it isn't _us_ who needs the Capitol, it is the _Capitol_ that needs _us_. The cannon fires again and my attention returns to the Games.

The kill is in Zone 3, which is Seeder's zone. Knut is the killer, limping along the hallway of a building in his zone. Behind him swings the limp form of Labrys from a rope attached to the felled beam of the building's roof – which is caving in. I count the number of kills we've had today, and it's four, which is pretty decent for the second day of action. I think the Gamesmaker will be hoping for something more entertaining than four kills on the second day, but as long as they aren't more gruesome than Flicka's clawing and tearing and flattening of District 9's face and skull, I think it's going to be alright. I think it will. After all, if you cancel out the Districts, the Capitol is left to face the fact that it is nothing.


	10. Chapter 10: Deane Scythe

CHAPTER TEN: Deane Scythe

Biter feels comfortable enough to make a joke of Phinehas Gideon's style of speaking, mainly through the mouthing of his words. The mimic routine has very little entertainment value, but seems to entertain those around him, and unfortunately one of them is Thatcher. I give him my most disgusted look whenever he decides to look over at me. He hasn't in several minutes. Gordy is also entertained, but based on his look, I think it's for another reason and I am not interested in knowing _the_ reason. Romulus Cane and Phinehas Gideon have been exclaiming their shock at the devastation of the electric fire, contributing to 50% of the deaths on the second day. They are _enjoying_ the hopeless struggle of the female from District 3 who becomes a moving fire hazard in less than two minutes from the opening of the Games coverage. They're even making jokes at the expense of the poor Tribute, who didn't choose to be lit on fire, did not choose to be in this arena and did not choose to slowly burn to death in a building so far away from home and the comfort of her family and friends. I feel deeply sorry for her, but also apathetic toward her. She was stupid enough to get herself into the Games, and she was stupid enough to be in the region that the Capitol decided to firebomb; she was stupid enough not to run away from flammable materials like the wood of the townhouses and she was stupid enough not to look desperately for water or for another Tribute to end her life and prevent her from all that pain. And I feel related to her too. There are too many emotions I'm not interested in having: this is how the Hunger Games includes us all – through emotions like empathy and apathy interplaying on our foundational ideas of life and how we live it. I catch Thatcher looking at me and I decide that he's made his choices for allies today and I'm not one of them. This is to say, I don't look over at him.

We never got a chance to visually eulogize the slain female Tribute from District 8, so I decide to eulogize her personally, which draws on my own imagination (which is not a strong point for me). Her name was Notch and she left behind family in District 8. They lived in Jeffer City, and Notch's parents both worked in the electronics factory that gets shown all the time when the Capitol comes to District 8. She was an older sister to a younger sister, and the two of them were very close. Notch's younger sister will need a lot of help from her family in bearing the loss of her best friend and big sister. She might even blame the Capitol _silently_ for stealing from her someone she loved so much. Tonight will be a very difficult night for her. Her parents were working today and that means that this recap, where Gideon and Cane are making fun of her death, is the first time that they are learning and seeing the death of their child. Her mother doesn't feel anything at this moment, not right away, and her father feels defeated, so the words I am imagining I'd say to them can't play on their inability to feel emotions in this moment. Actually, I don't know how I'd talk to them.

We've moved on to reviewing the full episode in which Knut hangs Labrys. Knut looks like an impressively strong teenage boy, and as the muscles in his arms ripple as he's strangling the female Tribute – who looks diminutive beside him – _power_ is the word that comes to my mind to describe him. He is a raw and sheer manifestation of "power", and that is impressive to me. He is from District 2, mostly known for their manufacturing, but his ability to work with rope rivals some of the abilities of our cowboys in 10. Knut is more impressive to me when I consider that he was poisoned and dumped out a window in the previous episode and recap of the Games. He is still limping as he searches for victims in the building he drops into from the ground level window. As he looks around corners, I can see him wincing each time he shifts his weight. He must have landed on his hip when he fell out the window. Of course, it was Seeder – our guy – who shoved him, so the limping is the fault of District 10. Knut hears someone moving and becomes immediately still. The camera shifts so that we see Labrys walking out into the hall looking very unconcerned. The roof is falling in, exposing the splintered beams and in particular the central beam that rests at an angle on the far wall of the hallway. This is where she is going to die. That beam, sad in its brokenness, will become the leverage for Knut's rope to hang another innocent victim. And my mind wanders away from the episode, even as the killing is unfolding.

What sort of world are we living in? I don't know why that is the question I'm developing while watching these Games. Actually, I'm not even sure why it happens to be _these_ Games that are eliciting _these_ questions when I've had more than ten years of Hunger Games to watch. Why… _what_ is so important about these Hunger Games that I am waxing introspectively more than other years? One of the simplest answers I stumble on is this: The Games were a spectacle that I bought into in past years when I knew that I was safe from them by virtue of suffering through this life I'm living each day. But this year, for some reason, I feel more irritated by the suggestion the Capitol is making about me and my life: it belongs to them, obviously, and I may be the one living it, but they are the energy that can quickly take it away from me. This isn't an original thought, obviously: they tell us that we aren't the owners of our lives every year at the beginning of the Games. In past years, it was easy to remove specific location and familiarity within the Games because the arenas were specific landscapes that had nothing to do with me and my life; this arena is different because even though it has nothing to do with my life literally, there is a strange metaphor present in the arena that has so much to do with my life. They are setting a stage that represents the environment of lots of folks outside of the privileged life I have been living, and perhaps the metaphor they're also setting up is one about the relationships of us, the citizens of Panem. They are suggesting that our relationship structures are crumbling, burnt out, rundown and are host to all sorts of dangers – most of which are deadly. But what they suggest most clearly is that the catalyst of these decrepit relationship structures is the folks who are actively relating. How we are relating to each other, the Capitol and the arena is suggesting, is detrimental to our survival. For those Tributes who are choosing to stay hidden, away from all the other Tributes, their ability to succeed and to live is reliant upon their ability to maintain isolation and wait for the barbarism of the other Tributes to result in their own destruction. The Capitol is telling us that we are isolated and we are so barbaric that we are destroying ourselves, _and_ that is the best possible style of social relationship we can conduct. At least, this is what I think they are saying. And for me, what does that mean? I think it means that we are alone, naturally and irreversibly. Now, I look over at Thatcher who isn't looking at me. Can he deal with this reality? Are the Games something we play in life and that the Capitol actively mirrors with staging the Hunger Games? What if we stopped playing the Games? What would happen? It's a dangerous thought, but I know that he and I did it before we got here. Can't we do it again? The only thing we have to lose is our privilege as ranch-hands, right? So, we survived before and we were really young then, which means that now – being older – we'll be more successful if we band together and actively resist playing the Games in daily life. It's rebellious, for sure, but perhaps it's less of a threat when it's only two boys rebelling. I think if we were to resist the games together, Thatch and I could create for ourselves a much better life. What we need is to be together though. I can't do this alone.

I wait until the boys are mostly clear of the Feeding Hall, then I take Thatcher aside. "Grab your blanket and pillow, Thatch. We need to stay out in the barn tonight." Thatch looks at me weird, but I wave his pending questions away. "I'll say more in a few minutes. Just grab your blanket and pillow." He nods and heads off to the bunkhouse. I leave the Feeding Hall and look out at the glowing horizon beyond District 10. What _is_ out there? Are there arenas like Biter said? Thatcher returns with his bedding and we head out to our barn. He sets up a spot in the back while I take silent council with the cows in their stalls. Thatch comes to my side. "Deane, what's up?"

"Look," I begin, quietly. "I don't want to play these games anymore."

"What are you talking about?" he asks. "What games are we playing?"

" _The_ Games, Thatch," I try to convince him. "Don't you think that we're in as much of an arena here at the Ranches as those Tributes are on the T.V.?"

"No," he responds, flatly. "We're not in anything at all like that arena. I don't understand what you're saying."

"Look," I try a different angle. "It's the life we're living. Do you think you have any control over it?"

"No, but I'm okay with that, Deane." He answers. I'm not satisfied.

"You're okay with Mr. Burliss telling you when you have to wake up and go to sleep, when you can eat, _what_ you can eat, and basically everything else about your life?"

"Yeah. I can't take care of myself, Deane, not without the work that we're doing."

"Okay, but _who_ is that work for? _Who_ is benefitting from it?" Thatch frowns and takes a step back from me.

"Deane, stop. Stop talking like that. Okay? It's not worth it."

"Thatch, we did it once, moving around from place to place, no one knowing we existed and no one caring, not even the Capitol cared. They don't care even now, and now, as people, we matter even less! We don't even get counted into the Reaping Day bowls more than once. The odds are _always_ in our favor because if they weren't, _people would ask questions_."

"STOP, Deane. I don't like this line of thought." Thatcher has begun to sound scared.

"I _know_!" I say, urgency in my voice. "It's a scary proposition, but if you want to matter in this world, you have to live in it first."

"That's exactly what we're doing, Deane. We're _living_ in this world. Don't throw it away."

" _No_ , we're _not_ living in this world, Thatcher. We're throwing away other kids' lives so that we can support an organization that doesn't care about us or even know that we are in existence. We're the _slaves_ of this District, Thatch. _Slaves_. We have no names and no accountability for ourselves. But we _did_ have that once, and we're older now so we can have it _again_."

"But where would we live?" Thatcher's reactions suggest that he's thinking about my proposition, at least. "What would we do?"

"I don't know," I say. "But it would be something we'd be doing for _us_."

"See," Thatch says in a voice that sounds defeated and tired at the same time. "See, that's just it. You have no plan for us except that we'd throw away all the protections we are living with, and when we do that, all we have going for us is fear and the drive to run away. If you think that's a better life for us, well I disagree, because like you said to Biter yesterday, the motto for our lives is 'Work to Live. Live to Work' and I'm sorry Deane but that plan is more concrete than yours." He sighs and shrugs as he backs away from me. _I'm losing him_. "If you want to run away, I'm not going to rat you out. See how far away from here you can get before sunrise, when they notice you're gone and send out Peacekeepers to find you. I mean, they'll come to me too, and they'll ask me all kinds of questions I bet. And I'm a pretty good liar, so I won't say anything because this conversation never existed between us, but how long will it be until you manage to get yourself caught? What if you do make it somewhere else? They're still going to round you up and ship you back here for the Reaping Day, and when you get registered then there will be no hiding." His eyes are so sad, but I know he's speaking truth. "So if it's my blessing you are asking for, well you're my brother and you have it, but I can't go with you if that's what you're asking." I have only one pitch left, and I didn't want to use it but I see that I have no other choice.

"We don't have to go very far, Thatch, but we _have to go together_. We're a family, and you're all I have in the world. And I need to keep you because when I lose you, I'll have nothing. We don't have to go very far. The Peacekeepers will think we're far away anyway, when they find out that we're gone. And that makes the Compound right outside of the Gaming Reserve the safest place for us to hide in. We _can_ do it. We're young and strong and we can contribute to the lives of those Prairie Dogs. And suppose no one finds us? We'll be entered into the reaping bowls only once every year, or we'll be taken for dead and then there won't be any cause to sort us into the Hunger Games. We'll be…"

" _Outlaws_. That's what we'll be, Deane." Thatcher shakes his head. "You said you don't want to play the Games anymore, but what you're suggesting is just another type of Games that we'd be playing. I can't do it, Deane. Family or not, I can't do it, and the heartbreaker is that I _want to_ do it because I _do_ need you and can't live any kind of life without you in it. But this thing you're suggesting isn't life either. We'd be on the run all the time, even after the Peacekeepers gave us up for dead, we'd never be able to settle anywhere and make any sort of life for ourselves or for each other. We can't do it. I don't want you to do it either." He grabs my arm firmly. In his eyes I see that he is telling me the most sensible thing in the world, and that I need to believe him. My dreams of running away die there in the electric space between us.

"We're not at home here," I plead with him, but I can see it's futile and when he replies I expect to hear his answer.

" _You're_ not at home here. _I'm_ trying to make the most of what I've got. Let me do that same thing for you, will you, _brother_?" I nod without thinking, and I know it's not because I really agree with him: it's because he hasn't called me "brother" since we arrived here and decided together that we would look out for each other. Here we are now, years later, renewing that promise.

"Okay," I mumble. He offers me half a smile but it's enough for now.

"Okay."


	11. Chapter 11: Atoka Menzies

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Atoka Menzies

His name is Cor Lee and he has ideas about how we're going to keep Seeder and Flaxie alive. He's taken me to Nvohg Café, one of the Capitol's most attractive neon cafés, after the premiere of the 19th Hunger Games, and even though the environment is noisy and jubilant, neither of us blends into it, nor are we saying much. I speculate on the origin of neon cafés: they are the latest rage in the Capitol, and they are reminiscent of the discothèques of long ago. Their draw is the lighting: it is sharp and very unnatural. In most neon cafes there are several interpretations of green, red and yellow neon lights, and none of them are flattering or stand still. Nvohg spreads them across the interior of the café so that heart attacks (which would seem to me a natural reaction to the atmosphere of the neon café) are at a minimal due to the edgier dark areas in the interior. Also, there are patterned lights – of the kind you might see in a stage production lighting schematic – that reflect shapes into the café and usually throw them at elongated angles across the room. And at the bar, there's always an eerie play on light and dark: the liquor is colored and luminescent but the bar is bathed in black light. I suppose if you were on drugs, this would all be a really relaxing environment to be in, but one look at Cor tells me that, like me, this is abnormal for him. It also tells me that something is off, even though I don't know him at all. His name is Cor Lee, he has plans for saving Seeder and Flaxie, and that is all I know about him.

If he were a less attractive man, I'd only look at him as a sponsor, but that's not the case for me right now. His costume is understated against all the other Capitol folk: he wears a glowing white shirt with cufflinks, black leather suspenders (which I suppose are an attempt to make a statement, fashion or otherwise) and flattering (for his physique) black leather pants. This costume is a change from the more exotic suit he was wearing earlier, and I use the term "exotic" very sparingly in this sense because there was nothing about him that stood out against the rest of the sponsors in the banquet hall save for his age and that he looked "normal" in comparison. So I suppose I can add to the list of things that I know of him, he doesn't act as though he is a part of this grand charade that is the Capitol, and that makes me doubt he is from the Capitol at all. It's an outrageous thought though: who here _isn't_ from the Capitol except for the Mentors of the Hunger Games (like me)?

"I come here when I don't want to be followed," Cor says out of the blue. I find that to be a very strange thing to say as well: _everybody_ who thinks they're _anybody_ in the Capitol is here at Nvohg Café.

"That makes no sense. Everybody's here." I say, looking around at the circus. He sucks his teeth and shakes his head.

"Not what I mean." He takes another drink of neon orange liquor in his glass. He puts it down and looks around, anywhere but at me.

"Okay," I say to take the edge off the chilly silence between us. At least I'm not envisioning how to kill him right now.

"I got to this stratum by way of flattery and sexiness," he says in response, after a rough pause. I smirk.

"I got here by killing folks." He grins and glances at me finally. I give him a smile and a single shoulder shrug, and say, "No one's perfect." He grins wider.

"As you can see," he continues. "I don't dress in high fashion for Capitol folks. _That_ , alone, can get me a following simple because I'm different." He looks at me again and I shrug again.

"Get up," I say almost barking at him. He's surprised but he listens, standing up so I can see him in full. I lean back, squinting my eyes, and then I raise my index finger and indicate he should turn. He does, his eyes twinkling and a silly smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He's standing in profile now, looking at me expectantly. I look him up and down, pausing at certain places on his body to give an approving nod or a disapproving frown. Truthfully, I can't see a flaw, but half the game is to make him think that he isn't as perfect as I think he is; to lead him on in thinking there's something he needs to improve to meet my approval. It stirs something in me to play this new game, one in which no one dies and no one kills. "Turn," I order him. He turns so that his back is to me, and I take in what this backside has to offer. _Leather suits him_. I try hard not to stare, but I fail. He looks over his shoulder at me, half a smile on his face, and I stop staring and resume a neutral expression on my face. "One more time," I say and Cor turns so that he is in profile again. More stirring inside, some butterflies. He's smiling for sure now, and I detect a little blushing in his cheeks. I check him out again and sigh dramatically, raising my finger again and ordering him to turn again. He's facing me now, the right side of his face changing colors as the neon lights dance across his skin, while his left side is in relative darkness. I don't bother being polite in checking him out now, and I throw in a lower lip bite to keep him guessing. Finally, I heave a dramatic sigh and look away. He chuckles and sits back down.

"Like what you see, Miss Menzies?" he's teasing me. I wave a hand absently in the air, swatting the comment away.

"I was just making sure you were telling the truth," I say with as much disinterest as I can given that it is, after all, a lie I am telling. _Really, I just wanted to look at you_. I'll never give that up. "In 10, they'd follow you for the same reason as here." _How fast would they see the Capitol in him and jump on his wagon thinking he can take them to safety?_

"So it's true that everyone is the same in the Districts?" he asks. I'm a little intrigued by his question. _Who says everyone is the same in each District?_ I'm sure there are nuances in lifestyles in each District just like there are in 10. The only places where I think life is 100% the same are the Capitol – where _everyone_ is weird – and District 13 – where _everyone_ is dead.

"Maybe in District 13 they are. Everywhere else: nope."

"Everyone in 13 is dead," he says glumly. I nod definitively.

"Exactly. There's nothing more unifying than death, Mr. Lee," I say sarcastically.

"Ohhh," he says softly. "That's not true." He doesn't elaborate though. Rather, he drains his glass and gets up again. I watch him as he walks over to where I'm sitting and offers a hand to me. I take it out of curiosity and perhaps there is a desire I'm invested in that moves me toward him. At this very moment, I want to keep him close, and that's all _I_ can elaborate. But the Games rage on for me, flaring up when I least expect it, and when I take his hand, I feel the death-cold hand of my slain Denton. I can see him lying on the beach, dying. Immediately, I retract my hand and frown at him. He frowns back. "It's me, Atoka," he says and I fill in the rest for him. _I'm not going to kill you, Ato. You're not going to die at my hands._ Still, I step back one step. His frown deepens.

"I don't know you," I say.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he chuckles in a patronizing way. I'm still not interested in taking his hand again, false promises or not. He shrugs finally and drops his hand to his side. "Okay. Come on. There's something I want to show you. Something I bet I can get your mind off the Games. It always takes mine of them anyway." I'm in retaliation mode. _What do you know about the Games? You're just a spectator._ But I have an uncanny feeling that he can read my mind, which is bogus and yet difficult, as a feeling, to discredit.

We used to have women and men in 10 who could make accurate predictions on lots of things relating to the future and the past. We called them Cassandras and outlawed them from society. Eventually, they all left the Town except for one Cassandra whose name was Iffegenia Cordwip. At first, rebel leaders in 10 listened to her and asked her questions about the future, and while she called for change in favor of freedom – the freedom they were seeking, at least – they kept her alive. My memory is not perfect on this course of events: I was only four at the time. One day, she responded to a question with an answer no one wanted to hear, and after that, the rebels expelled her from the ghetto they'd made of the Town. I don't know where she went. I _do_ know that when the Capitol executed our rebel leaders, one of them, Enjolras, shouted out, "Find Iffegenia. She was right," and I remember that very clearly.

"Well?" Cor asks. I nod slightly, still not convinced.

He takes me away from the neon lights and the sounds of the city, away from the tall buildings and the street lights. He walks along a path that follows the train tracks above it until we reach the single body of water – a lake, manmade – between the mountains in the Capitol. At the first sound of water lapping the breakwater barrier, I stop. Cor looks back at me.

"You are aware that my arena was mostly water, right?" my voice has a sharpness to it. I think he nods. "So, tell me how you think bringing me to water is going to take my mind off the Games?" His eyes twinkle.

"I'm sure it won't. But why does that mean you have to avoid water?" He holds out his hand again.

"I want to go back." I say forcefully. He sighs.

"Okay, then go." I hesitate. He retracts his hand for the second time and turns his back to me, continuing down the path, his hands now shoved into his pockets. Suddenly, I have no idea what to do. He stops a little farther down the path and sits on a rock. He's looking out across the lake at the city lights. I follow his gaze, hoping to see the city as well, but instead I see the shores of three islands about two miles from where I stand, and each island is spread apart from the next a fair but unfathomable distance. If I were closer, I can only imagine that the shores would be soaked in blood. Four islands, six Tributes on each: one center Island with the Cornucopia and a tidal wave awaiting – it's as nightmarish as a decrepit city in which twenty-four potential killers lurk around every corner waiting to slaughter you.

"I thought you were leaving," Cor calls out to me, sharpness in _his_ voice now. I clench my jaw, turn around and pick my way back along the path into the city. I'm angry at him for making me think I could ever escape the Games, and I'm angry at me for thinking I could trust him to be a sponsor for my Tributes. Really, it seems, he wanted to remind me of my horrors and my trauma from the Games. _Just like all agents of the Capitol, Cor Lee is here to remind me that my life is not really my own._

As I'm walking back, I wonder where Iffegenia Cordwip is, really, and if my memory of Enjolras' final cry is accurate. _Could the last remaining Cassandra be alive still, and where?_

"Hello lovely," the toad-like man stands in my way, blocking the door to the Training Center. He's familiar – not his looks but his smell: he smells swampy. His crooked smile reveals a mouth full of golden teeth. He's only toad-like in his costume and facial features. He's wearing a lily pad green tuxedo and white cufflink shirt and a white bowtie. His face is round, boxy at the jaw and without prominent cheekbones, and his nose sits low on his face with wide nostrils. I try to pass him but he puts out an arm to block my way. "We have an arrangement. I help you, and you help me." Now I remember him. Being able to get Cor as a sponsor – if he's even willing to be a sponsor now – helped me forget I'd made other arrangements.

"Actually," I say sweetly. "I don't need your help anymore." I try to move by him again, but again, he blocks the way.

"Too late. You're already bought and paid for."

"What do you mean?" I ask sharply.

"I mean, they found the girl and anyone who goes near her is going to get blown up. Fireballs can destroy most building materials, lovely." He's still smiling, and now he leans closer to me so the full _essence de bog_ assaults my nostrils.

"Lovely," I say.

"So, take me to your place, lovely, so I can collect my payment." His arm drops, but he's practically on top of me. My skin crawls. Thankfully, I'm calm and collected, and I'm playing the Games all over again. I look into his eyes and force a smile.

"Right this way, my Prince."


	12. Chapter 12: Turning Tables

CHAPTER TWELVE: Turning Tables

 _The Compound_

Moxie wiped tears from her face and sighed as the cool evening breeze kissed her cheek. Elka appeared at her sister's side, noiselessly, and leaned her tired head against her older sister's arm. Moxie stroked Elka's hair and wrapped an arm around her small shoulders.

"I get bad dreams too, Moxie," Elka offered. Moxie nodded.

"Not like this," she said kindly.

"How do you know?" Elka said, frowning up at her sister. "I bet you we have the same nightmares." Moxie couldn't imagine how that could be possible but she nodded anyway. "So tell me what you were screaming about." At this suggestion, Moxie laughed and ruffled Elka's hair, and then she leaned down to be eye-level with her sister.

"Don't worry about me, chickadee. It's just a dream." Elka grinned and wiped away a tear from Moxie's face.

"Just a dream that makes you cry." She sighed and Moxie thought she caught a glimpse of an older girl in her sister at that very moment. "Well, if you're not going to tell me, I'll tell you," she continued. "I had a dreamed that you got reaped into the Hunger Games and I had to watch you in that awful arena with all those caves and tunnels. And I watched you fall into a really deep hole where there was hardly any light, and not only did you fall but you also broke your ankle. I cried and cried and cried for you after watching that because that boy you saw was nearby and I just knew he was going to kill you." She stopped talking and mirrored the frown on her sister's face.

"Elka, what boy are you talking about?" Moxie asked, gripping Elka's shoulders. Elka shook her head.

"I don't know his name, but you do… at least I think you do. He's got tawny hair, I think that's what color it was… it was hard to see in the gloom of the caves. And it was so real, Moxie. It was so real. He didn't look like a mean boy or like someone who could kill, but I just knew that he was going to kill you." She winced and shook her shoulders. "Moxie, you're hurting me." Stunned, Moxie let her sister go and let out a breath.

"Was he from District 10, Elka?"

"Yes," Elka said with a fair amount of uncertainty in her voice. "Yes, and no. He's not from District 10 right now, I think that's what it means. But he will be." Moxie frowned deeply.

"What do you mean by 'it'?"

"We never know _exactly_ ," Elka said. "But we have a really good idea and feeling about these things when they happen."

"We?"

"Yeah," Elka's face lit up. "Yeah, we." Moxie shook her head, standing up slowly.

"Elka, you're making no sense at all. Start from the beginning and tell me clearly who you are talking about."

"I told…" Elka began but then she stopped herself and sighed one more time, crossing her arms and looking out across the prairie. "I didn't think you'd understand when I decided to tell you." She fell silent for a long time, during which time Moxie puzzled through what her sister was saying, or what she was _trying_ to say. It didn't make sense that she was talking about herself as a "we" or that she might be talking about that boy – if her descriptions were to be believed – who had let her and Bess off that evening on the Gaming Reserve. It also made no sense that Elka would have seen her in the Hunger Games, or _him_ if she was to be believed! He was a ranch hand, and everyone knew that ranch hands _never_ got reaped into the Hunger Games. "It happened once," Elka cut through Moxie's internal monologue, which made Moxie frown even deeper. "It did. The boy's name was Musa. But it's very rare. Just ask Miss Vetta."

"Elka," Moxie began slowly, trying to convince herself that she wasn't crazy to even think it. "Elka, can you hear what I'm thinking?" Elka laughed very loudly at the question.

" _No_! Of course not! I can't hear your thoughts!" She said when she's composed herself. Moxie felt a little relief at the confirmation that what had been happening wasn't some sort of mystical mind-reading trick that Elka was using to amuse herself. She was relieved that her sister was, in fact, very normal and it was just a coincidence that she must have been thinking the same thing that Elka was thinking, and that Elka had determined it to be a chance to talk about what they were both thinking … at _exactly_ the same time. A shiver ran down Moxie's spine, and Elka turned to her sister and gave her a big hug, running her warm hands as far up Moxie's spine as she could reach. She had to bury her face into the hollow of Moxie's stomach though, and Elka's face pressing into Moxie's stomach at the same time as her hands were pressing Moxie's back served as a bellows that pushed the air out of Moxie's body. Finally, the older girl had to detach herself from her sister, gasping to catch her breath again. She was leaning down in order to suck in as much breath as she could recover, and at this level, she could see into Elka's eyes clearly. So it sent another shiver trickling down her spine as she looked into her sister's eyes and saw them shining like illuminated stones along a moonlight pathway, naturally catching the light and shining from inside rather than from outside. It was ghostly seeing her sister like this and Moxie frowned even as she coughed, sputtered and sucked in fresh air. Elka's smile twinkled as much as her eyes did. "Of course I can't hear your thoughts," she repeated in a voice that didn't sound like her own. "Ohh Moxie, but I can _read_ them."

 _The Ranches_

Deane wasn't sleeping. Another bloody day of the Games and another icy silence between him and Thatcher left him feeling very alone in the world. It wasn't how he had hoped it would be at this point. He had hoped that he and Thatch would be closer to each other, not farther apart, but the truth was that his suggestion that they run away had left Thatch feeling unsafe around him. Thatch thought that Deane would up and leave at any moment and that keeping his distance from his brother would mean that no further bad turns would befall him. But what Deane saw instead was that Thatch was taking Biter and using him as a replacement for his own brother. It was not a comfortable feeling to know that his brother was seeking to replace him.

Earlier that day, Thatcher had chosen to sit with Biter during the screening of the Hunger Games. It was an episode in which Flicka, the crazy girl from District 2, had murdered both Tempra, the girl from District 6, and Inby, the boy from District 12. Actually, when Deane thought about it without sneering, it was a very impressive feat. She killed them both in quick succession. The final image of her bashing their broken skulls together and seeing Inby's split open so that his brains slipped out made Deane want to vomit. "If the Capitol thinks this is entertainment, then they're dead wrong," Deane whispered to the cow into whose stall he was leaning. "And if she wins the Games, we're all doomed." The other big death scene had been much quicker. Gusset, the boy from District 8, had lured Dex, the boy from District 1, into a hidden alleyway between buildings and had needed four throwing stars to bring the Career to his knees. The fight wasn't over there though. Dex had managed to get to his feet and hack off Gusset's throwing hand, and he might have finished the District 8 Tribute if it hadn't been for the flask of poison Gusset had with him. Dex let one of his open wounds get too close to Gusset, who emptied the flask of poison into Dex's blood stream, then smashed the glass bottle on the Career's face, stabbing one of his eyes. Deane winced as he thought about how the poison took half a minute to reach Dex's heart. During that time, Dex got a few cuts into Gusset, but nothing fatal. He managed to cut a large gash in Gusset's side though, but before he could cut any deeper, the poison gripped his heart and he just stopped, crashed to the ground and died. Deane wasn't convinced that Gusset would live through the night, or that he wasn't also completely insane. It seemed to Deane that insanity was what won the Hunger Games. He had no intention of waiting around for insanity to win and come unleashed by the Capitol. His saddle pack was ready and the horse he had chosen for the task was at the back of the barn. Mr. Burliss wasn't coming around for inspections tonight because he had guests to entertain, and that had been like a stroke of luck, at least. Deane knew that it was now or never. His heart was heavy, but it wasn't an unmanageable burden. He made a promise with himself that he'd come back someday and steal Thatcher away.

From the bunkhouses there was a great roar of laughter and the sound of a door opening and slamming against the wood planks that outfitted the walls. Light spilled across the dried grass of the yard, and footsteps were marching off toward the outhouses. Deane knew that whoever it was out in the yard, they'd be going the opposite direction from him, so he would need to act fast if he was going to make this escape clean. He counted five seconds and then grabbed his pack and tiptoed toward the back of the barn. The mare was content to be saddled even at this time of night. She liked Deane: he always gave her extra oats and never used a switch on her if it could be spared. Even now he was gently whispering human talk into her ear as he saddled her and patted her head. Her ears perked up as he reached into his shoulder pack and withdrew a handful of oats. She gave a little whinny and set to eating the gift he offered her. Before they knew it, he was on her back and directing her gently toward the back door of the barn.

As horse and rider slipped out into the night, a light breeze danced across the Ranches from the northern direction of the Gaming Reserve: freedom. Deane glanced back at the moonlit rooftops of the buildings he had come to know well, and his heart sank thinking about leaving his brother all by himself. Thatch had made his choice, though, and if he wasn't willing to come with Deane, then there was nothing Deane could do about it. The point was that Deane knew he couldn't live here anymore. He couldn't agree with the privileged life he was leading anymore, even if the protections in place for him would remain in place after he ran away, the point was that he was not being allowed to live his life. He needed to be free from his slavery, and that was exactly his purpose for this moonlit ride.

Deane gently dug his heels into the mare and she began to trot northward toward the Gaming Reserve. Deane wasn't sure how long he could live on the Reserve before they caught him, but he had time to think about it more tonight. Plus, there was the choice before him to step off the Reserve and offer himself as an assistant to the Prairie Dogs. The face of the girl he'd scolded once, years ago now, returned to him. She was a Prairie Dog: would she remember him? Would she accept him? Better yet, would she give him away?

 _The Town_

Velvetta was glad for the end of the broadcast. She had been watching only under obligation to do so by the Capitol, but she was not invested in the spectacle like some others were. She'd long since heard the Tyler girls stop talking about them, and that made her feel a little more proud of them than she had been already. She sighed and was preparing to turn out all the lights when there was a knock on her kitchen door. "Who in the Hell could that be?" She said, heaving herself up out of her chair – the only cozy one she had – and making her way to the kitchen. She arrived just as her night visitor knocked again. "Alright! Alright! I'm here." She unlatched the door and opened it to find no one else but Drake Tyler catching his breath on her doorstep. She looked around the abandoned schoolyard and then gripped the man by his shoulder and pulled him inside, closing the door quickly.

"Miss Vetta," he began but she silenced him.

" _You_ are a crazy man, Mr. Tyler," she scolded, offering him a seat as well.

"Don't I know it, ma'am. Thank you." Vetta pulled up a chair opposite him and took a seat.

"You coming _back_ from work or going _to_ it?" she questioned him with a sharp look.

"Coming back, of course," he said. "The girls need their Dad at home, even at this time of night." Vetta hummed her approval at this lucky stroke of sense in the man sitting across from her. "Vetta," he said and then stopped and leaned forward, rubbing his forehead. "Vetta, I need to ask you something personal."

"Oh I don't like the sound of that, Mr. Tyler," she said. "What's your question, boy?"

"It's not for me," he began, stumbling over his next few words. "It's about the girls. Especially about Moxie."

"She's a good girl, Mr. Tyler. Don't you go ruining her."

"Yes, ma'am, but that's not what I'm trying to ask you. I'm trying to ask you about," he blushed and stumbled on his words again. "About _women's issues_." Velvetta Cordwip did all she could not to burst out laughing.

"Has she started bleeding yet, boy?" Drake shook his head. "I didn't think so, but girls are starting a lot sooner than thirteen these days." Drake blushed a deeper red.

"I don't know the first thing about caring for women except for how to get them pregnant," he said all in a rush. "I want her to learn properly how to grow into a woman. Can you help?" Vetta considered Drake for a few minutes. He had been a very handsome man all through his growing years. It was his mother's side that had graced him with those good looks, and it was his father's side that had graced him with his strength and skill as an outlaw. She'd never breathed a word of it to the girls before, but their connection had come from that midnight many years ago when the boy Drake Tyler had come to her door and asked her for a personal favor. He had needed somewhere to stay until it was safe for him to leave. She had given him the kitchen cupboard, which was mostly empty and could fit a growing boy of fifteen years without too much adjustment. _You better hope you get yourself killed before you get yourself found, boy_ , she had said to him all those years ago. The Peacekeepers had come anyway and they had been ruthless then. They were looking for the last of the rebels and they had Drake on their list.

"The last time you came around here looking for my personal help, boy," she said sternly, "it didn't end so well for any of us did it?" Drake shook his head, his expression changing to one of apology and sorrow. "I guess bygones ought to be left as bygones. It's a lucky mistake that Iffy couldn't keep her mouth shut. That's what." Drake looked up at her with defiance in his eyes.

"You don't think I was there to route her out do you?" Vetta tightened her lips and clenched her jaw. "Vetta, I knew they were coming for her. I knew what she had said, and I wanted her to get out like I was."

"Well, she didn't and you did, Drake. And we can't change the past so let's forget about it. You want me to help bring your Moxie up into this world as the best woman she can be. And I have a mind to say no, but I love that girl like she was my own, and I love all your girls like they were my own, so I'm going to say yes." The look of thanks in Drake's eyes was enough for Vetta but she accepted the thanks he voiced to her when she was done accepting his ask. Her silence brought him back to his seat though.

"Miss Vetta, what is it? Did I ask too much?" Vetta shook her head.

"No child, you didn't ask too much. I was just thinking how good you were with my sister, and how you did what you could for her. I was just thinking about those times when we all knew what was going to happen, but Iffy was the only person brave enough to say anything about it. And I was just thinking about how I was ready to risk everything so that nobody found you when you came to me that night about twenty years ago now." She sighed heavily and rubbed her eyes. "And I was just thinking about how your lifestyle could get those girls rolled up into the Games if they catch you. Why do you do it anyway?" Drake leaned his elbows on his knees and got close to Vetta.

"Once, long ago, my Momma read me a story about a man who came back from war and devoted his life to stealing from the rich and giving to the needy. He was called Robin of Locksley, but she called him Robin Hood. I want to be Robin Hood for our folks." Vetta shook her head sadly.

"Well, Robin of Locksley, you better hope you get yourself killed before you get yourself found, for the girls' sake."

"Yes, for the girls' sake." Drake repeated.

 _The Compound_

Bess saw him first. Moxie and Elka were outside too when Bess had woken up and found them gone. She had thought that she heard Elka having a bad dream, but when she came outside looking for them, she couldn't see any trace of upset on Elka's face. No one was talking, but that was okay. The prairie was enchanting beneath the moonlight, and beyond the fence, the fires were going strong. Set against it all, the enchanting backdrop and the fires, the exposed and dark side of the canyon closer to them, against that backdrop was the hauntingly lovely Old Fifty Yards Tree. Bess imagined it was sleeping, and that was when she saw him emerge from its shadow. The boy was astride a horse and he was coming from the Gaming Reserve. At first, his appearance frightened Bess, but as he came closer, she decided that there was no reason to be frightened. Anyone who was out on horse at this time of night was not likely to be a threat. Nonetheless, she wondered if they shouldn't go back inside. It was too late for her to make the suggestion when it came to her though, for Moxie had spotted the horse and her boy as well. "Who's there?" she called out toward the approaching pair. Of course there was no answer.

"Moxie, don't!" Elka was saying as Moxie took a step forward toward the approaching stranger. "Moxie, he's okay." But Bess could see that her older sister's nerves were spiked. She went to her sister's side quickly and took her hand.

"Let's go out and meet them, Mox," she suggested. "It might be someone from the Compound at any rate."

"On a horse?" Moxie frowned at Bess. "No one except for the neighbors have anything close to a horse, and it ain't our she-mule."

"Exactly," Bess said. "So let's be good hostesses and go out to meet him. Come on." She pulled Moxie with her as she stepped forward. Elka began to come with them too, but Bess turned to her. "Elka, go and keep Sissy warm. We'll be back really soon." Elka stopped and put her hands on her hips, but Bess kept pulling Moxie forward, and after a few paces, she turned to look back at Elka and found her gone. _Good_.

"You know," Moxie said through gritted teeth. "I think our sister is a Cassandra." Bess shrugged, griping Moxie's hand tighter.

"Would that be such a terrible thing?" she asked. They were closing the gap between them and the rider, and any talk to fill the time was welcome to Bess. She was getting a little more nervous as they got closer.

"Nothing good _ever_ happens to Cassandras, Bess." Moxie spat. "Besides, she saw me in the Games with that ranch hand. You remember him." Bess caught her breath as they hit a cold spot of air. The rider was almost upon them now, so she lowered her voice.

"Of course I remember him. He gave us a free meal without any trouble. I remember his friend too. He was not as nice, but I think he'd have come around if we let him." Moxie tugged on Bess's hand and they both stopped. The rider was a few paces away. He too stopped and dismounted, patting the horse's head and whispering something into its ear. Then he reached into a shoulder bag and pulled out a lump of something in the palm of his hand. The horse whinnied and began eating from the rider's hand. _Oh! He can't be so bad if the horse trusts him_. Bess let go of Moxie's hand and stepped forward, but Moxie yelped and grabbed out for Bess's arm, catching it at last and pulling Bess back to her.

"Bess! Don't be stupid! We should go back!" Bess freed her arm from Moxie's grip and smiled at her, even though they couldn't see each other's faces. She took five paces toward the rider and horse, and bravely put her hand out toward the horse. She giggled as the horse sniffed her hand, and then nuzzled her palm with a little whinny. Focusing only on the silhouette of the horse, Bess broke the silence.

"You're not going to hurt us are you?" The stranger shook his head. "Good. My sister is afraid of you."

"And you?" he asked, his voice a gruff whisper.

"Should I be afraid of you?" Bess asked. She saw him shake his head. "I didn't think so."

"I'm running away." Bess nodded.

"Where to and where from?"

"I don't know where to, but I'm from the Ranches." Bess finished patting the horse's nose and turned to face the rider.

"The Ranches," she repeated for him. "Why would you want to run away from there?" The rider said nothing. Bess's eyes were almost well-adjusted to the night now and she could make out his eyes through the gloom.

"Why would you choose not to live in the Town?" He answered sharply. Bess shrugged.

"We're better out here in the open. Out here, no one owns the land except for the folks who live and die on it." He said nothing. "Who are you?" He said nothing still. "I'm Bess Tyler," Bess said, hoping he might return the introduction.

"I've met you before," he said, his voice softer now. "Long ago." Bess grinned, remembering the only two ranch hands she could.

"So are you the older boy or the younger?" she asked. He snorted.

"The older." He paused and then took the plunge. "I'm Deane. Deane Scythe."

 _The Capitol_

Atoka woke with a start. Her "guest", Anura Bufo, was asleep in the chair in the corner of the room. He looked uncomfortable like that, and Atoka felt like he ought to have a room for himself, but he had insisted on staying with her. He had misled her in his advances: he wasn't interested in her as she had thought he was, but instead it had all been a rouse.

"Appearances are everything, Miss Menzies," he had said when they had stepped into the elevator. "Right now, it appears that I am making good on a promise made to me earlier this evening in a banquet hall filled with people who are going to see me until the Hunger Games have ended, and some who will continue to see me after that. So," he leaned back from her, "appearances are _everything_." When they arrived on the tenth floor, she had anticipated him having his way with her, but quite the opposite had happened. "Please, sit." He had offered her a chair in the sitting room, and then had gone to the bar and fixed himself a drink. "Would you like one?" She'd said no.

"I'm a little confused, Mr. Bufo," she'd said. "Aren't you interested in repayment?" He had smiled, closed mouth this time, and sauntered to a seat on the couch facing her.

"You are obviously repulsed by me, and I don't blame you. There is nothing about me that is remotely attractive except for the fact that I have money, and those who have money have power. But power is not attractive like people think it should be." He sipped his drink. "But you know that already don't you?" She'd said nothing. "I bet you do. Because for you, power is always tied to death and destruction. But for me, power is tied to construction and life-giving. It is the sole purpose for being a sponsor, I think." He took another sip and then focused on her.

"That makes no sense," she retaliated. "You just admitted yourself that you planned to use your power to destroy."

"I'm using my power, Miss Menzies, to make certain that an innocent life is saved."

"While destroying others," she spat back.

"Okay. I understand." He said, staring at her. "You are right." She glared at him for a long time while he sipped his drink, and when he'd reached the bottom of the tumbler, he set it down on the side table and continued to look at her. "May I say something you might find inappropriate?" She said nothing but continued to stare at him. "Miss Menzies, I'm asking you a genuine question. I don't want to offend you."

"Sure," she said quickly. "Whatever. Talk away!"

"All I have to say is that you are quite a beautiful lady." Atoka snorted. "Even when you discredit yourself like that, I still think you are beautiful." Atoka sat back and crossed her legs, leaning against the arm of the chair. "I'm not looking for sex," he continued. "Neither were you when you propositioned me. What I want is more valuable than sex. I want to know what it is like to be a part of the Hunger Games." Now, Atoka snorted even louder.

"Why on earth would you want to know that?"

"Simple," he said as he steepled his fingers. "I spend half the year preparing for the Hunger Games, and then less than a week – unless the Games are designed for longer – being a very important part of the Games from the periphery. But I've always wondered what it felt like to have all that time knowing that if you made a wrong move you would be dead."

"What? You want to get off on the pain and suffering of innocent lives?" Atoka spat at him.

"There's no need to be rude, Miss Menzies. At some point in the Hunger Games, no one is innocent anymore. It's one of those delicate things that I never really took care to understand. Where do you think you cross the line from innocent to intelligent?" Atoka wasn't sure why he'd paired those two adjectives opposite each other, but she knew what he was asking.

"It's not an instinct, if that's what you're asking me."

"No. I'm sure no one goes _into_ the arena with the desire to kill. But I _do_ think that there is a very definitive moment when the killer becomes us. I've watched your particular Games many times for one reason only. Do you know what that reason is?" Atoka shook her head. "It's this: you begin as a killer and a ruthless one at that, and you end as a ruthless killer, but at one point you transform from a killer to a recognizable human being. It's the moment when…" but Atoka held up a hand to stop him. She closed her eyes and shook her head violently. When she reopened them, he was looking at her as though he'd just discovered a new species. "Oh, I see. You've never left the arena. All of this, every day you live and breathe, all of _this_ is the arena. You're still playing the Hunger Games." Atoka stopped herself from jumping across the room and smashing his skull into the carpet.

"You want to know about the Games," she repeated through gritted teeth. "You want to know because you want to study me." He nodded. "Well I'd prefer to have sex with you because then I'll know when the torture is over." He grinned and responded with a chuckle.

"I'm not bad between the sheets, actually," he said slyly. "I don't blame you for wanting this encounter to be over so quick. But you have to understand that I'm in search of empathy, not in search of a way to prolong your torture." He leaned forward. "I don't think you should have to live like this, always fighting. I think at some point, someone needs to let you free."

Atoka looked at him, sleeping in the chair. He'd misled her. For that he would have to die. She wasn't sure when or how, but she was certain in this moment that it would happen, it would happen when he was least expecting it.


	13. Chapter 3: Moxie Tyler

CHAPTER THREE: Moxie Tyler

I didn't see the point of celebrating after the Reaping. I had made my promises to Miss Vetta and I meant to keep them, and most folks celebrate after their kids are saved. I think I get it why they do, but I couldn't shake the sight of the Mr. and Mrs. McKay saying their final farewells to not one kid but two. Bess was holding my hand so tight I thought it was about to fall off. After the Anthem, we got dismissed. I made up my mind to look and find Sissy and Elka, and then go straight to Miss Vetta's. Some folks were already celebrating after the Anthem. I heard one girl saying "Better two from the same family than one from two different families." I thought she was a cruel witch to say that, but I think it was because I felt like there was something really awful sending a brother and sister into the Games together. _It's not like you plucked up and volunteered for one of them though,_ my conscience dropped on me a weight in my stomach like a pile o' stones. Each time I tried to swallow another little stone would fall down the insides of my throat and collect. Pretty soon I was just walking around with a collection of stones in my stomach. When we got to Miss Vetta's, I couldn't eat. I took a plate of lemon drop cookies like she offered and a nice glass of warm milk, but the milk was cool before I even thought about drinking any, and the cookies weren't going to e eaten, so I gave my portion over to Elka, who was very glad to have hers and mine.

I got myself stuck on watching Elka eating there as happy as if it was her birthday and chatting with Miss Vetta about whatever. They were talking small about things folks wore and the strangeness of the Capitol man's accent, his trousers and his strange made up face, and more things like that. I shouldn't have felt like hitting her, maybe – and good thing I didn't – but that kind of talk seemed not right for today, not after we'd all allowed two more of our kin go to certain death. When she came around to the Reaping I finally clamped a hand over her mouth, making her squeal and fuss, but I kept it up there till she went quiet again. Miss Vetta wasn't impressed and I think I shocked Bess and Sissy too, but I didn't want to hear about the Reaping all over again. It was bad enough we had to watch it later on the T.V.

"Moxie?" Miss Vetta was going to ask me something and I didn't want to answer much so I didn't look her in the eye like I usually do. "Moxie Tyler, what is the meaning of this?" She goes on to ask me anyway. I shrug my shoulders and tuck my feet in under the chair. "Moxie Tyler, I asked you a question." Miss Vetta keeps on pestering me.

Bess tries to come to my rescue. "It's alright Miss Vetta. Moxie wasn't watching half the time on account of being careful about me. This one was my first and all. Moxie was only trying to…" but I didn't let her finish before kicking her under the table. Bess yelped and shut her mouth. Miss Vetta was up in a flash, pulling my chair out from the table and looking me square in the face. I just pluck up the courage to look her straight back in the face.

"Moxie Tyler, you will not behave like this under my roof, you hear?" I clenched my jaw and gave her one nod. "Why did you jus' kick your sister?" I don't give her anything. "Moxie Tyler I asked you a question and I'm not going to ask you again." _Good_ , I think. _I wasn't going to answer it the first time_. I swallow and another few stones fall down into the pit of my stomach. Miss Vetta keeps on staring at me all fierce-like, and I keep on staring back at her. Right then, Miss Vetta's is the last place in the world I want to be. I don't know where else I'm going to go, but I don't want to be here, not with my sisters around me. I keep swallowing stones and holding back something I can't really describe, but it's something that's welling up inside of me, and all of a sudden I get this urge to hit Miss Vetta. Really, I don't want to hit her, but something wicked in me wants me to. I clench my jaw harder, and she keeps on staring me down, but it's for no good. I can't say for how long this goes on but we finally get interrupted when the back door opens and little Striker comes bounding in. Miss Vetta's face changes, but her eyes are still hard-locked. She peels first, and I think like I won this one. What's there to win?

Dad's brought with 'm a boxed cake for Bess's birthday, and when I blink again, I see it's getting' darker outside. Striker and Lenox are boxing with each other in Miss Vetta's receiving room, in the storefront and we hear them right before we hear some tinkling of bottles and a small crash. Miss Vetta went off to figure out what's going on, and I can see I put her in a bad mood. Things were just happening in me I don't understand, and when I conclude I put her in that mood, I smile, even though it's not what I meant to do. Bess don't seem too comfortable and she squirms a bit in her chair, which calls my attention, and I make some pretty awful faces at her. I see she's got tears clinging to the corners of her eyes and that only makes me want to make worse faces at her, which I do. _Why do I do that?_ I think as she starts to sniffle and one tear actually falls down her cheek. Dad doesn't notice, I guess, because it's Miss Vetta who comes in and sees Bess getting upset, and it's Miss Vetta who gets her up from the table and takes her upstairs.

Dad takes Bess's seat but not for long. There's a single knock on the door, then some quiet, then three more quick little knocks, and in a flash Dad is up and opening the door just a crack. Someone's pushing a few paper bags in through the door, whispering low so that I can't hear what they're saying but Dad is saying things back to them. It's all over in a minute and Dad carries the four paper bags to Miss Vetta's countertop and starts doing something with them. I can smell meat as he pulls things out of the first bag, and then some vegetables as he pulls things out of the second bag. Now he's pulling down a pot from Miss Vetta's wall, fishing for a knife and a board to cut on, and then he unwraps the meat. "Moxie, come on over here and help me pluck this bird, will you." I kick the floor and get up to go over to him. Daddy isn't Miss Vetta in this moment, so I'm going to listen to him and do what he's asking. Who does Miss Vetta think she is to me anyway? She's jus' a midwife! She isn't Momma. She doesn't a stand in for Momma either! If it was me and Striker, or if it was me and Lenox up there on the steps of the town hall getting called into the Games, Miss Vetta wouldn't be there like the Mr. and Mrs. McKay were. But Dad… he'd be there to say goodbye to us for the last time.

Lenox comes bounding through the kitchen and runs into the back of my legs just as I'm pulling the first feather out of the grouse. He banged my knees up against the rough cabinet so hard, I yelp. It startles Sissy and Elka, and maybe Dad is startled a bit too because he stops plucking for a second. It all comes boiling up out of me, then, and I grab a handful of Lenox's hair and yank him back a step as hard as I can. "Lenox! That really hurt you stupid!" Miss Vetta coaxes him away from me, but the damage is done and I throw down the grouse and make for the door. Someone's hands try to catch me, but they can't, and soon I'm through the door and out in the Town in the falling dark.

I know exactly where I'm going. But it feels like I'm trying to run from something I can't run from. The stone pile in my stomach keeps on weighing me down and making things harder for me. I've got to work twice as hard to move anywhere, but I'm a fighter, and I fight the heaviness with everything I got.

The way the Town is all laid out, you can't really get yourself lost unless you are trying. I only know it from having to come to Reapings and coming to school, and coming to see Miss Vetta when we need something. The road from the Compound leads to the main road into the Town, and it goes right on up to the Mayor's House, which is a shabby building if you look at it too long. It's painted all grey and the shingles on the windows are a grey-blue, so there's nothing much to look at. Just after the Mayor's House, the road opens up into the town square and rolls right on up to the foot of the steps to the town hall. The town hall was repaired a few times when I was a little girl, and it looks fancy tonight because it has to; the Capitol might only care about us once a year, but their type of caring is better than ours. The square looks like it ought to be made out of the same dirt as the rest of the road from the Compound, but actually it's the dust we all track in from our other places that makes it look that way. Really, the square is made of red bricks that are hard under foot and blazing hot in the summer when it isn't raining for weeks on end. Some of the shops around the square are dusty too because the wind doesn't stay too still around here, especially when we've all been kicking up the dust to help it. There are a couple of shops around, but Miss Vetta's isn't one of them. Nah, Miss Vetta's shop is on the other side of the ring around the square. These shops are blocking hers from view. So the outer ring around the square consists of some of the shops that border the schoolyard. That's where Miss Vetta's shop comes in. Hers is right on the schoolyard. The school is fenced in, not with that awful electric fence around the District, but it's got the same twisted prickly wire around on the top. We know it's prickly because Okie Bulmer, a kid from my grade, was dared to climb the fence and touch it, and he did, and it wasn't good for him. Sliced his finger so that the blood was coming down and he had to rip some of his shirt to cinch it so that it would stop bleeding. I remember taking him over to Miss Vetta's after school to get it better looked at, but that's not something Miss Vetta usually does because it's a minor thing. She does the major things, like birthing. So when I leave Miss Vetta's, I run right into the schoolyard and have to find my way out. I used her back door because the front one is locked. Nobody's open to business on Reaping Day.

The school is a kind of hateful-looking building. It is red brick, like the square underneath the dirt. Some of the sides look eaten away like stale bread after the mice give up on it, and that's because of the poison rain that falls around here. Least it's a building made of brick and not wood. Those wood buildings are on the other side of the schoolyard and the poison rain did worse on them: they look all chewed up. Folks have died in those houses and shacks. What they need is a turf roof to absorb the bad acid in the rain and filter the good things… at least I think that's how it goes. Trouble with them over there is that they've got a real pock-marked piece of land to be living on: Okie Bulmer lived over there and he says they used to use it like an oil field, so sometimes they see fire come up out of the holes left in the ground, and it's like those scary stories older folks try to tell you at night about wicked spirits that want to come up from the underground and do horrible things to children. I seen the holes once, and I'm like to believe them older folks' stories now, once I seen for myself. Can't be anything but wickedness coming up from that underground I reckon.

On the far side o' the schoolyard there's a gate. We kids kicked that gate in so much that it's come unhinged and there's nobody who is going to fix it anytime soon, so it's a good place for me to get out of here. I think it puts me in the part of the Town where they sell meats and things from the Ranches… not that anybody from the Ranches comes to the Town for anything. Folks go from the Town to the Ranches to give things to them ranching folk, and it's only on invitation too. I went once with Miss Vetta and I don't ever want to go back to those Ranches. They're hateful places too. I guess I don't entirely mean that. The buildings are the nicest in 10, but the Ranch-hands looked at us so reproachfully, and the cowboys stayed a good distance from us like we were something untouchable... in a bad way. Mostly, I think they're hateful because they're all wealthy folks who've got the money to make themselves look like they're better than us. If that's their aim, they've hit the bullseye. I want to spit every time we have to pass the Ranches. They got mean dogs there too, one's likely more to kill you dead than lick your hand. Ranching kids go to the Reaping Day just like everyone else's kids do, so in the end I guess we're all the same to the Capitol. The biggest difference is that Ranch kids are never picked. I reach the weak link in the fence and kick through the unhinged gate to get out. It feels good kicking something. I do it again, then again, then again and again and again. I'm upsetting those stones inside my stomach. I can feel them clashing together and pinching me from the insides. I keep on kicking that gate though, mostly because it feels good to beat something up, but also because I'm not sure what I'm going to do if I stop. I feel a bit like the gate, I guess, pinched, tired and maybe also somewhat unhinged. When my toe starts to hurt, I kick the gate harder until it doesn't hurt anymore. The pinching inside me keeps on growing, though, and I must've kicked the fence hard enough to make those stones jumpy. One or two gets all lodged up in my throat, and suddenly I'm choking. I double over and land on my knees as I'm trying to clear the stones out of my throat. Only I know now that they aren't really stones; they're something else. I can't get them to go down, and they're pinching my throat awfully. I can't scream either, I've just got to feel them pinching my insides until my eyes well up and I start crying hot, poisonous tears. Someone grips me from behind, but I'm too weak to fight 'm so I let 'm wrap great strong arms 'round me and pull me into their generous chest. It's someone soft and warm. Someone whose heart is pounding against their body like a prisoner trying to get out. I listen and it calms me down, I guess. The stones settle back into the pit o' my stomach, and I sniffle just a little.

Miss Vetta still has me wrapped in her arms when we get back into her kitchen. Sissy and Elka have been plucking the grouse after I stormed out, and when we come back in, Lenox and Striker start staring at me. Miss Vetta sits me down and wipes my face dry. When she looks into my eyes now, we aren't fighting. I remember her saying to me once, _she who forgives first ends the war_. I guess I lost. I blink in her gaze and she wipes away the rogue tear that tries to fall when I done it. It's Bess who breaks our silence though. "Moxie! You're bleeding." I look down and see she done got it right. There's a little trail of blood from wherever my kicking foot has been on that floor. Lenox is looking at it with some kind of look in his eyes, and I can't tell if it's something he's scared of or something else. I'm like to think it's the something else, and I don't know why but it chills me. When he looks up at me looking at him, a little smile ripples across his face. It's gone pretty quick, but I guess he's amused at blood.

Bess and Miss Vetta get my shoe off and then Miss Vetta tears my sock into strips, pours boiling water on them and cleans them up while Bess asks me if it hurts. I didn't think about it hurting until now when I see the unnatural angle of my is so tied up in carin' about me, I feel downright awful now that I kicked her before. Another rogue tear comes to my eye and I brush it away. "Hey Bess," I say, interrupting her. "Bess. Stop, fussing. Stop it now!" I say more firmly. She listens, looking up into my eyes. "Come 'ere." She comes to my side. I take her hand in mine, just how we were at the Reaping, and I give it a gentle squeeze. She squeezes back and I think I see her twinkle in the eye a little. Maybe I'm a wicked spirit. Maybe she's jus' downright good all over. Whatever it is between us, we got on well, and this was the one time today when I've ever done anything that I can recall that might have hurt her. I mean, I can be wicked in telling her stories that she doesn't like to hear, yes, and I have been wicked in other ways with her, but I think she always forgives me for being myself. But today, kicking her was about the meanest thing I can think of that I've ever done to her. I can't tell her I love her even though that's what I want to say. Nobody 'round this place knows how to say something like that. I don't know. Does anybody?

"Moxie?" Bess asks. "Does it hurt?" Now as I think about it, I guess it does. I nod to her, and she does something I wasn't expecting. She kisses me on the cheek jus' like that, and squeezes my hand. "There. Better." I'm fighting to get those words out of me.

"Bess," I begin, but then the T.V. whirrs and flickers on. It's time for the replay of the Reaping Day. I feel like the Capitol is butting into my life at all the important moments, like this one, trying to remind me that I am not the owner of my own life. I'm not the owner of my life. I'm not the owner.

While we're lying in the bed together, I try again with Bess. I nudge her lightly. "Bess?" I think I hear her groan, so I fight to get the words out. "Bess, I love you." There's nothing from her. "Bess, you hear me?" Still nothing. I lean up and over her, and then heave a sigh. Of course, my sweet sister is asleep.


	14. Chapter 13: Bess Tyler

**{** _ **Part Two**_ **}**

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Bess Tyler

"I'm Deane," he said. "Deane Scythe." I stared at him, my eyes gradually becoming adjusted to the dark. I could almost make out his face. None of the details about him were etched into my memory, but I could remember his companion, Thatch, very well. "Where's your partner?" I asked, hoping Thatch might appear out of the darkness just as Deane had done, but I could see well enough to interpret Deane's head shake.

"He's not coming," Deane said gruffly. "I _had_ to leave him behind." He sighed heavily. "It's _his_ fault." Elka crept up behind me and brushed my hand as she came to a stop at Deane's feet. She sighed and then took his hand in her's, an act that surprised us all. I could tell Deane was softening against his will: there was a change in the air between us. As if to confirm this sudden change, Elka said, softly, "No. This is how it's supposed to be." I was puzzled, but Deane put words to both our thoughts.

"What do you know about it, little girl?" Elka might have smiled: I imagined she did. However, Moxie piped up to break the moment and rid it of all its delicacy.

"Elka, come away from him."

" _Wait_!" Deane held up a hand. "What do you know about what's _supposed to be_ , girl?" There was a forcefulness in Deane's voice that made me feel like he was yelling at me. I was prepared to say something in Elka's defense, but again Moxie beat me to it. I felt her brushing past me to reclaim our youngest sister. Once she had Elka's free hand in her own, she squared up in Deane's face.

"Hey! That's my _sister_ you're picking on! Why don't you go back to the Ranches?" I felt very uncomfortable with how this situation was unraveling right before me, literally. Deep inside, in the deepest parts of me where I locked away the sort of things that I wanted to keep private from everyone else, _secrets_ , I recognized that even if Deane wasn't Thatch, he was one step closer _to_ Thatch than I was, and to lose him in this moment would also mean losing another chance to see the young ranch hand again. I wasn't _expecting_ to see him again, of course, but I did hope I would. If Moxie pushed Deane away right now, I'd lose my fragile link to Thatch, and that mixed up stuff down in the deep part of me, it didn't want to lose that link. Uncharacteristic of me, I got up real close to Moxie and snapped back at her.

"Moxie! Deane here is _our_ guest. Don't you talk to him like that." I could tell Moxie had something more to say to me and to Deane, but before she could say any of it, I said, "Why don't you and Elka go back to bed? I'll take care of our _guest_." At that moment, I had no idea how to take care of Deane any more than I would _any_ boy who wandered up to our Compound. The only boys I knew to care for were Dad (who's a man), Lenox and Striker. I had hope that the instinct would be there when I needed it. I could see Moxie still standing there, and maybe she was trying to decide if it was a good idea to listen to me. Finally, Elka let go of Deane's hand and pulled Moxie back toward the hovel. I thought I could hear her saying, "It's okay, Mox. This is how it's supposed to happen."

"That was a pretty dumb thing you just did," Deane said to break the silence that had scabbed over Moxie's departure.

"How do you figure that?" I asked, challenging him.

"I figure she's your sister and didn't you just go and make an enemy of her?" Deane said, his tone caught between a statement and a question. I shrugged, even though he couldn't see it, I think.

"If I know Moxie at all, I know that's not how it works for her. She respects folks who can be strong." Deane didn't say anything, so I added, "Come on. We have a shed for our mules. You can tie the horse up there and we'll see about finding you someplace to sleep."

"She doesn't like me, does she?" Deane asked. I heard his gruffness masking something else. It was knowledge that I thought I could draw directly to my own deep place where lay my secrets. Did he also have a secret place in the deep?

"Moxie is just hard on folk who aren't family," I said. "I bet she doesn't forget your threats either." I imagined he blushed at that, but perhaps it was a self-gratifying imagination. "Come on." I headed back toward the hovel and trusted he would follow.

"What about you?" He asked from very close behind me.

"What _about_ me?"

"Do _you_ remember my threats?"

"Your buddy made it all better," I said, smiling under cover of darkness. He was so quiet I wondered if he'd stopped following me, but when we got to the mule shed, he was right there. The she-mule began to get upset by the horse's appearance into her life and habitat, and she began to make the kind of commotion that raises alarm for folks who don't know animals very well. I knew it was just her way of saying that she didn't want to share her space with a strange animal, let alone one so high and mighty as a purebred horse from the Ranches. I was inclined to agree, except that I was finding it hard not to like Deane. I figured that our old she-mule was about as much Prairie Dog as me and Moxie, then, but as far as calming her down went, I wasn't sure I could get in the shed to do it. Deane was closer. He slipped in beside the she-mule and I saw him reach out and let her sniff his hand, and then he spread his fingers and let her have another sniff before he turned his hand palm-side up and let her have a final sniff. She calmed down pretty quickly after that, enough to let him pat her and whisper softly into her ear. Finally, he gave her one last pat and led the horse away outside.

"Maybe she doesn't want me here either," he said, sounding sad. He also sounded like he was preparing to leave.

"I don't think so," I said quickly, stalling him. "I think you just handled her very well. I've never seen anyone make her that fussy before, or calm her down so easily." He shrugged.

"Do you forget what I am?" I grinned.

"No. Do _you_?" I heard him sigh heavily. "Anyway, I want you here." He shuffled his feet and again I felt the air between us change. If it was hostile at first meeting, that had faded and now I felt like there was a sense of amicability developing. Was it enough to keep him here, though?

"Why?" He asked, softly. I thought it would be too dangerous to voice the real reason, and at any rate it was a secret. Instead, I shuffled my feet and said plainly, "Because, where else would you go but here?"

"I _can_ go anywhere I want to," Deane retaliated.

"Yeah, that's true. But you came _here_."

"Wasn't on purpose, if that's what you mean." He shot back, but his retorts were weak and he knew I knew it.

"No. I bet not. Your companion was the nicer of the two of you," I said, feeling brave. Once these words were out there, though, I felt stupid too. I heard him shuffle his feet again.

"Well, Thatch isn't here. And if it's him you want, then you're out of luck because he's _never_ leaving the Ranches." He sounded both angry and sad. "I've already tried to free him." The anger seemed understandable to me: Deane was used to having Thatch around and now he was out here on his own after offering to his companion the option to run and having to face that refusal. Yet, the sadness I detected forced me to reach back for its familiarity in my life: I found it, finally, in my memories of the Reaping Day, when Moxie was acting up and not being herself; when all I wanted was my sister back. That was how it came to me, the sadness… _and_ the answer.

"Thatch," I began, treading softly as my insides burned with the discovery. "He's not _just_ your companion, is he?" I thought I saw Deane turn to me, but the darkness concealed his expression, so I could only guess how he looked when he responded.

"Yeah," his voice failed. He tried hard to get it back, to get his words out, so when they came, he was pushing so hard that they came out all at once and very loudly. "Yeah, he's my brother." His echo died before I was able to say, "Oh."

"Bess, who's that?" Dad's voice broke our silence roughly. His lantern swung from the pole he carried it on, and he dangled it right in Deane's face. We hadn't seen him coming, so it revealed the startled expression on Deane's face that I thought I might have on mine too.

"Uh," I stuttered, trying to regain my composure. "Dad, this is Deane." I might've said more except that I saw the expression on Deane's face as he looked at me squarely for the first time since we'd last met. I had the feeling that, at that moment, Deane was feeling exactly as I had felt years ago when he caught me in the Reserve.

"Who are you?" he'd growled at me, then. "A poaching Prairie Dog?" He'd seized me by the shoulders, lifted me up and shaken me roughly. "Do you _know_ what the Cow-men _**do**_ to poaching Prairie Dogs?" He'd shaken me a few more times and I'd wanted to cry pretty badly. Moxie had come to me then and she'd stomped her foot and gotten all up in Deane's face.

"Well, what're you going to do, boy? Are you going to tell on us? How's that going to make _you_ look to your Cow-men?"

"A Hell of a lot better than _you_!" He'd said back. "Hens?! You think you can come here and take out hens?!" He'd swatted the hens away from me, and I'd been really scared he might hit me too. Moxie must've known because she'd grabbed the hens right back and stomped really hard on Deane's foot.  
"Now you listen to me, you good-for-nothing cheat! You're going to let us go with those hens and not a _word_ to the Cow-man. And you're going to do it because you know we need them more than your selfish lot. And you're not going to tell on me or Bess and get our names in the Reaping more times. _And_ boy, I swear if you _don't_ , when I come _back_ from _winning_ the Hunger Games, I'm going to kill you."

"No. What's going to happen is I'm going to tell the Cow-man on you, _then_ I'm going to get your name into the Reaping a hundred times more, and there's no way in Hell you're going to come back, so I'll be good."

"You think so? How are you going to do _that_ if you don't even know my name?" Moxie had challenged him.

"Maybe I don't know _yours_ , but I know your sister's and she'll do. Then I'll drag you both out in front of everyone in the Capitol and get you _both_ in deep trouble." Deane had been so angry, his face was all red and his eyes were so menacing.

His face wasn't much different now, except in his eyes I saw fear.

"Deane who?" Dad demanded. I made up my mind to repay Thatch in kind by way of his brother.

"Just Deane, Daddy. He's a friend. Well, his _brother_ is a friend, but only on Reaping Day when we get scared." I lied. "His _brother's_ my age, anyway." Dad looked Deane up and down.

"A long way from Town, boy. And with a fine horse." Deane was without words when he looked at me. I _was_ the one who'd started the lie so it was only fair for me to keep it going.

"Well, see, he's a poacher, Daddy. Just came from stealing a fine horse from those _lazy_ good-for-nothing ranch hands. Isn't that right, Deane?" I shot him a look that said he needed to follow through if he wanted to get away with this. He must've understood because he swallowed and nodded.

"Yes, sir." Dad gave him another scrutinizing look over before backing up some.

"It's too late to go back to Town unnoticed, boy. You can't sleep inside. We've got no room. You stay out here." Then, Dad was gone. Both Deane and I exhaled.

"You're welcome," I said as he patted the horse and unfastened her saddle, removing a pack rolled and tied to the back. He took her reins and made a sturdy-looking knot to tie her to a plank on the roof of the mule shed.

"Why'd you do that?" Deane asked, his tone softer.

"A while back, someone we both know vouched for me and my sister, and now that I know he's related to you, I had to return the favor. But, you have to understand this: we're even now. I don't owe you anything and you don't owe me anything. We're clean." He unrolled the pack revealing a blanket and a pillow. I had to frown. "Is that all you've got?" Deane nodded, lying down on the blanket. I crossed my arms, my frown deepening. He studied me a moment.

"What?"

"I just thought – "

"That we ranch hands were rich?" He snorted. "Nope. You've got more stuff than I do." I sat down beside him, which surprised us both a little, though the deep within me thrilled at it.

"Oh. I didn't know." He sighed.

"Yeah, well most folks don't." He was looking up at the sky and all the stars way up above. I followed his gaze and found a familiar collection of stars. We called the picture they made The Ladle because that's what it looked like. At the end of its handle was a star somewhat brighter than the others, though it wasn't the brightest. I pointed to it now.

"See that star up there? It's the bright one." He looked and finally nodded when he'd found it. "We call that the Wanderer's Guide." He nodded again.

"I've heard the cowboys call it something else… the North Star. That's because it never moves from where _it_ is." He said, describing it's properties, as I knew them, perfectly.

"Yeah, same for us." We fell quiet for some time.

"What is life like as a Prairie Dog?" Deane asked.

"Life is good, Mr. Scythe." I smiled, thinking about all the memories I had with my sisters. "Life is good."


	15. Chapter 14: Deane Scythe

_**CHAPTER FOURTEEN:**_

Dean Scythe

I hate to admit it, but when dawn came on the Compound, and I woke up to find the Prairie Dog girl, Bess, sleeping in the grass at my feet, I felt no easier about my decision to leave. She had saved me, like it or not. She wasn't interested in scolding me for our shared past and, in fact, she had made a point to wipe the past clean and declare us even. Her dad, though, had made a point of not wanting me here and he seemed like trouble waiting to strike. I had a talent for discovering trouble when it presented itself, and I knew he'd be it when he discovered me. I was thankful it was by cover of night and that his lantern wasn't quite capable of revealing me to him completely. Partial recognition was dangerous too. Anyway, it was my plan all along to get up and move on as early as I could, because in the light of day, full recognition was too possible to be risked. I got up quietly, trying not to wake the sleeping girl at my feet. Just as carefully, I rolled up my pack and pillow, tied the belt around them and was carefully walking to the mule shed for the horse when I stumbled upon the older girl, Moxie. She was blocking my way, her arms folded across her body, and she was wearing a smug look – one which I felt for sure I would always see her with.

"Your horse is gone. How are you going to get away now?" I jumped at the sight of her, and then frowned at her words.

"What?" She stood back and revealed that the horse was gone, in fact, just as she'd said. I threw down my pack in frustration. " _Dammit_! What did you do?"

"Hey!" She shot back, her hands in the air. "I didn't do _anything_! Remember, I didn't want you here in the first place."

"Yeah," I said angrily. "Well guess what? Now you're stuck with me!" I was pissed.

"Hey, anytime you want to start _walking_ back to the Ranches, feel free." I scowled at her, and then dropped down to the pack and dropped my head into my hands. This was _not_ good. I hoped she was enjoying herself, basking in my misery. I had no idea what to do next. What if her dad came out and saw me now? I'd rather be dead than go back to the Ranches. Finally, I lifted my head up, saw her still standing there with her arms crossed, and I decided I'd just have to start running. I couldn't do anything else. If the cowboys knew I was gone – and they _would_ soon enough – I'd have to put plenty of distance between me and them to be free. I got up abruptly and grabbed my pack off the ground.

"Fine. I'm gone." I said at the girl called Moxie, spitefully. Off I went, away from the Compound and out into the open plains. I thought I heard Bess talking to the girl called Moxie, but I couldn't stop now, no matter how grateful I was to her. Soon, the cowboys would be up and figuring out I was gone.

"Wait!" I definitely heard Bess calling out behind me but I shook my head and picked up my pace. At some point I figured they weren't following me anymore, so I slowed down and gave myself the chance to breathe and think. Who stole my horse? Who would want to keep me here? For a terrible moment, I wondered if it was Bess, but then I decided it wasn't because she was still sleeping at dawn. The other girl, the one called Moxie, she might have done it, except she wanted me gone. If she'd taken the horse, that would have been counter to her desires. So, who? I turned around and looked over my shoulder at the Compound, now looking pretty far away. Life was starting to stir with morning activity, and I could see how all the Prairie Dogs helped each other with their morning rituals in some way or another. I saw how homey it could have been for me if I had chosen to stay. I couldn't stay. Neither could I afford to linger now. It hadn't been close to an hour since I started out and I wasn't too far away in that amount of time. The Reserve was still so close: _too_ close for my comfort. I turned and looked forward to the plains and the land that stretched out before me. The most defining feature of it all was the dull green sea of grass everywhere I looked. I figured at some point in my journey I would likely go crazy from seeing so much of the same darn thing, but that was a problem that couldn't be helped. The next most defining feature was a great old tree a few paces from me, by all accounts dead but still standing. I wandered to it and felt the dry, dusty bark. It was smooth to the touch, but it was definitely too dry. It was an impressive creation, dyed a few hues of black like charcoal, but also maintaining its natural dried brown colors. It was impressive that it stood all by itself, too, like a great beacon amidst a dull see of dried green. Beyond it was the rest of the plains.

I pushed myself off from the tree and headed westward, putting the rising sun at my back for now. As I pushed from the tree's trunk, though, a hand-sized swatch of bark broke off and fell to the feet of the tree. Feeling compelled to respect the majesty of the tree, I picked it up and placed it back over the mouth of the hollow beneath it. It wasn't a perfect fit: anyone would know it was replaced there after being broken off just by looking at it, but somehow I had a feeling that this was how it was supposed to happen. I looked forward and up, not sure of where I was going exactly, knowing only that I could not remain here. In the early morning sun, there were more definable features to the plains than just its grass: the edge of District 10 could be imagined based on how the sun struck the infamous fence I had followed with Thatcher so many years before this. Also, the plains were not entirely flat as I had once thought they were; they dipped and rose, slightly but enough to keep me sane for now, and to the very extreme northwestern corner of the District, it was easy to see the black-reddish-orange tint of the wall of a canyon. How deep it dropped was the matter of guesswork for me, but if it was deep enough to conceal a boy of fourteen with weathered skin, I clenched my jaw and turned my gaze and my feet in its direction. There might be caves, there might be caverns, there might be _anything_ in that canyon, and with every fresh step, I discovered how okay I was with the possibility of a canyon hideaway. At any rate, folks were pretty anxious about the canyon by the way I heard it from them at the Ranches, and for once I was glad for the Hunger Games – which by any other scenario would appear to be the very tool of the Capitol used to destroy me, but in _this_ scenario had suddenly become the very weapon by which I planned to be saved. _Irony_ , I thought as I hoisted my pack up on my shoulders and set off.


	16. Chapter 15: Atoka Menzies

_**CHAPTER FIFTEEN:**_

Atoka Menzies

"So," a towel-wrapped and shirtless Anura pauses in the doorway, leaning on the frame. "When would you like to begin?" I look him up and down, curious to find that he's fit: perhaps not as fit as Cor but fit. I catch his eyes twinkling and scowl.

"When you're dressed." He nods and disappears. I'm still plotting when and how to kill him, but after seeing him vulnerable like that, I'm a little distracted. No one used sex in the arena, so it is not a memory I can draw on for inspiration. _That's a shame_.

After my shower, I dress plainly and go to the sitting room. Anura is fully dressed and lounges on the couch. He knows how to dress in green, though today he's not as odious as last night. Today, the trim green suit he's wearing is fitting, his cream colored shirt and green bowtie – I hesitate to admit – becoming. He stands as I enter and offers the same chair as last night. Deliberately I take a different seat, farther away from him. "Suit yourself." He says, sitting again. "I've got twenty minutes before they call us down to the viewing room, at which time I'll sponsor whichever Tribute you choose. First, I want to start by asking you questions about your Games and see how much we cover. Is that okay?" I nod, planning to waste the time. Anura takes out a pen and a journalist's pad of paper, crosses his legs and looks over at me. "Great. So, tell me, when you went to the launching room, how did you feel?"

"Awesome," I say, _very_ sarcastically. He gives me a condescending look.

" _Describe_ what you mean by 'awesome', please." I roll my eyes.

"Just _awesome_. What else do you want?"

"To me, 'awesome' feels like something very incredible has happened or _is_ happening, and I'm awestruck. Is that how you felt in the launching room?"

"Honestly?" I begin. "There's nothing _awesome_ about the launching room. It's drab. The tube we go up is also dull, and it's a long and slow lift up to the surface." Talking about it brings the room to mind, and how unfeeling it is for the last place I'm going to see in life… or at least that was how I saw it at the time. Like it or not, I'm there. "All you can hear is the hum of the pad launching you slowly toward the light. The whole time you're never sure of what to expect. You've had many chances to guess and prepare for what it _might_ be like, but the reality that strikes you while you're on the pad is simple: you have _no_ idea what the arena will be, and it's really an awful feeling. There are so many other thoughts going through your mind too: what you learned in training, what you remember from watching other Tributes train, their interviews, what persona you're playing, what your mentor said. What your District is going to see…"

"District 10 never had won the Hunger Games before you," Anura interjects softly as my voice trails off and my mind wanders to the longing feeling I had for my brother, Duncan, who had perished in the 6th Annual Hunger Games. I remember how awful it was seeing him appear in his arena, and less than half an hour later, being forced to watch him die in agony at the mouth of the Cornucopia. I shudder. "Who was your mentor?" Anura asks, still gentle.

"The guy who reaped us; I don't remember his name. Niro, I think it was: Niro Coriglia." I nod my head slowly as the name floats into my psyche. I remember seeing it on a piece of paper or maybe on the T.V. at my Ranch house in the Victor's Village. Or maybe it was Rodrego Burliss, the handsome cowboy everyone at the Ranches was insistent upon me marrying, who had mentioned his name in passing. If I recalled it correctly, it was a mention in regards to a funeral. "I think he died. He wasn't that old."

"What had he told you?"

"Don't die." Anura chuckles: I said it so matter-of-factly that I chuckle too. It seems absurd to think that I'd ever chuckle over that useless piece of advice, but I had managed to heed it… with help, of course.

"Sorry. That's not funny," Anura apologizes. I look at him differently. Maybe it's because he looks good today, or maybe it's because I know more about him than I did. Or maybe it's because this year I am actually trying to bring a Tribute from District 10 back to the Victor's Village with me. Whatever the reason, I look at him on the heels of his apology, and he's not so odious to me anymore.

"Thanks," I say softly. "But it's not helpful either." He grins, his golden teeth gone today, somehow. "What else do you want to know?"

"What did you think the instant you saw the arena for the first time?" I close my eyes and drift back to that moment.

The push to the arena is annoyingly slow, harrowingly relentless, and cloyingly nerve-wracking. I never fashioned myself a sentimentalist or a spiritualist, but as the pad creeps its way up to the surface, I can't help wondering if Duncan felt like this a year ago to this day. _Don't die_ , I think. _District 12 female is the Tribute to beat. Let someone else kill her,_ I remind myself. _Stay away from Denton,_ I shudder. The tube closest to the surface is flooded with blinding light. I think I can hear water as I get closer, but maybe my eardrums welcome any noise that isn't the mechanic hum of the launching pad. If that is so, it could be _any_ noise up there on the surface and I would hear it for what I wanted it to be. I'm beginning to go nutty from the hum of the launching pad, and I'm keenly aware that if I have to hear it for much longer, I _will_ go mad. Combine that maddening noise with the increasingly blinding light toward which I am moving and it all comes out to one humongous headache.

 _Don't die. Fight 12. Avoid Denton._

 _Don't die. Fight 12. Avoid Denton._

I repeat it over and over and over again as I'm being pushed through the blinding shaft of light and into the arena. I blink: sand blows into my face and my mouth, forcing me to cough. I squeeze my eyes shut again.

 _Don't die. Fight 12. Avoid…._

 _Don't die. Fight…. Avoid…_

 _Don't…. Fight…. Avoid…._

I have a strategy as I open my eyes and listen to the countdown over some invisible loudspeakers that surround the arena. The physicality of the arena comes into sharper focus: glittering blue water laps at the white sandy shoreline a few feet from the base of my pod. About a mile away is another large white sand island with a magnificently golden Cornucopia throwing sunrays in all directions ( _No wonder the light at the surface was so blinding!_ ), but beyond it I cannot see anything. Behind me, I'm keenly aware that there are trees and there might be running water somewhere directly behind me, but I'm too scared to move for fear that the pod will detonate beneath me. I have only one thought as I take in all the sounds and the sights of this deadly, beautiful arena, and that thought is _Run!_

"Interesting," Anura responds. "Your first instinct was not to fight, but in fact to flee." I nod, the aesthetics of the arena evaporating from my memory slowly."Did you _see_ Denton?" He asks. I shake my head.

"Even after the countdown expired, I couldn't see anything except for the Cornucopia in the center of the arena, and the jungle surrounding me. I didn't know that he was on another island: I thought we were all on the one island and we had to swim to the center island and the Cornucopia in order to get our weapons. I did think I could use the trees somehow, but as weapons… that thought didn't come to me until later. No, at this very moment, at this very beginning of the Games, I knew only one thing: I was _alone_."

"And your island had a jungle, right?" I nod. "But you weren't prepared to use the vines as a weapon just then?" I nod. "So might you say that the moment you stopped feeling alone and the moment you began to seek out other Tributes was the moment that you stopped fleeing the Games?" I feel like his question is pointing to something hidden deep inside me, something I've not had the chance to explore in these last twelve years, and yet it is there all the same. My mind shifts away from the Games and I'm propelled back into the sitting room of the Training Center. I frown.

"Why do you want to know so much about the Hunger Games? What is so special about them for you?" He nearly grins.

"I want to know how Tributes see, feel, smell; it's their senses I'm interested in, how they experience the Games, so that my gifts to them will help them survive." I think about his answer. Does it make sense? On the one hand, no, because _who_ in the Capitol actually cares about the Tributes' wellbeing? On the other hand, well _maybe_. _Maybe_ his interest is only a sickening fascination with how one can draw out pain and suffering before the victim capitulates or is destroyed. That's the only way I can wrap my head around his step-by-step approach to the Games through his questions to me. He did say something about wanting to help me get my head out of the Games, but he seems to be more interested in trapping me back in that arena, and for what cause? Oh yes, to feed his sick obsession. Maybe there's something else behind this? Maybe he has a different goal in mind?

"What were you thinking just now?" He asks, and with the precision of a predator seeking its prey, I detect a slight vibrato in his voice: apprehension. "Your expression changed for a moment." He adds, qualifying his question. I shake my head.

"I'm deciding if I trust you, _still_."

"And?" He adds a nervous smile, the _first_ sign of weakness he's gifted to me.

"I don't." I return a _killer_ smile. _His_ expression changes, now, and I revel in this moment of his unraveling: the power dynamic has changed in our relationship, and _I_ hold it all. A pair of escorts appears to take us to the viewing room.


	17. Chapter 16: Velvetta Cordwip

_**CHAPTER SIXTEEN:**_

Vetta Cordwip

"Robin of Locksley indeed!" I say to the door that has just closed behind Drake Tyler. "That boy…." I begin without finishing the thought. Drake and I go back a ways, further than that awful time before the Hunger Games began.

I'm closing on fifty-two years old: an elder by most of District 10's standard. There aren't many of us elder folk left around the Town. I could name them all counting off on one hand because we get together, sometimes, to remember those we loved who died. Mildred Hatch is the elder closest to me. She knew Iffy really well. Millie and I share tea once in a while. She helps me remember Iffigenia. No'omi Chego comes to visit more often. I knew No'omi before the forming of District 10. We were "sisters". When No'omi visits, it is always for the sake of business: she maintains a relationship with our people and revisits them as often as she can, which is more often than those in the District who have forgotten their people, by accident or on purpose. No'omi brings "presents" on her visits, as well as news from our people. "So-and-so was joined with So-and-so last new moon", "So-and-so has given birth at last!", "So-and-so are talking about moving into the District", "So-and-so is dying". No'omi never took a surname befitting of the folks of District 10, so when they registered her among the Townies, she simply gave the name Chego – her father's name – and they have her as No'omi Chego. She and I put the mortar and pestle, the grinding stone and board, and most of my supply of lantern oil to work when she visits. It is with No'omi that I remember the ways of our people. Old Caron Craddock stops over for a visit now and then too. Once upon a time, folks thought he might ask me a question that would change my life and his, but we're just good friends now. He knows what he's up against and he knew it then too, or at least my mother never let him forget it. We have wonderful chat, old Caron and I.

Oh, but now I'm being wistful, and I'm living into my identity as an elder woman. In the deep inner part of my being, where the real spirit and soul of me live in harmony, I know that I'll venture out in to the prairie one of these days and return to my people. I long to dance around the fire one last time, to chant the way we used to when I was a girl, to give my congratulations to the newly birthed child, the newly joined couple, and to remember the life of our ancestors who join with those I've known and loved who've passed on from this life to the other. Oh, but now I'm being wistful, living into my elder woman identity. "That boy…." I say again, shaking my head at the door as I bolt its locks and draw down the shades in the windows.

Upstairs in my personal rooms, I touch the little wooden carving of the Flute-player. Next to him is the Thunderbird with his magnificent red headdress. The Flute-player always scared me when I was a little girl. His figure is so lean, his hair so wild and the curve of his body is always too perfect. Mother always told Iffy and me that he was a sly character, as able to mislead you as he was to charm you with his music. And yet, we needed him in order for the cycle of life to spin. If he called you forward with his music, you were to feel honored that he had chosen _you_ to carry on the memory of our people. If he called you forward with his charm, you were to feel honored that he had chosen _you_ to endure the difficulties of carrying our people to whatever end. I was called forth by music; Iffy was called forth by charm. It means more to me now than it did. _Someday soon I will take Moxie to the fence and we will see which calling she receives._ I smile at the Flute-player and offer a silent word of thanks to him and his callings, to his guidance of me and my people, and to his blessings as they have come to us. The Thunderbird is less frightening, though a name like that ought to be more sinister. He is the magnificent creature which claps his wings and brings the rolling thunder over the skies. He comes to relieve us, a magnificent and beneficent creature. I smile to him as well, offering silent thanks for his blessings, his presence with me and my people, and his giving work to relieve us of the oppression of heat, dust and humidity with his graceful heavenly dance. I settle myself down on the same mat I have slept upon for almost fifty-two years and extinguish the lantern's light.

On the fourth day of the Hunger Games, I'm entertaining Millie Hatch who wishes to watch the Games. I know she does it out of obligation: after all these years, she's resigned herself to following the orders from the Capitol. I don't think she believes in them, but she's often said that she'd rather not cross paths with President Coriolanus Snow. The television is on anyway, so we take tea in the kitchen. The first half hour of the broadcast features a lot of talk from the commentators, and in the kitchen from Millie.

"That girl hiding in the horn, she's about the craziest Tribute I've ever seen. Definitely not a girl from District 10. Definitely not the sort of person I bed President Snow is interested in seeing survive. It's not decent to hide in the shadows and then come out at brutally, _brutally_ murder other Tributes. I hope she dies." I scold Millie for harboring such thoughts and desires. "What? You think it's good for the Capitol to honor a Victor like her? I don't. Miss Atoka was vengeful and ruthless, and of course she's still haunted by her own shadow, but I seriously doubt that this nutcracker would be scared of anything if she won the Games. And I don't hold out hope that the brother and sister McKay are going to survive and win the Games, but I'd rather see one of them make the final four than that cracker in the horn. And I _know_ for a fact that you agree with me, Velvetta." I can't deny it: Flicka is a very frightening Tribute. Seeing her die before the end would be a blessing, but I won't wish on it. Those thoughts _do_ come back around to haunt you; just ask Atoka Menzies, who is always in here for something to put her to sleep.

And then we're treated to a little action. Gusset, the District 8 male, creeps upon Otari, the District 4 female as she's trying to climb through a window. He sticks her through with the short sword he's carrying, and at that moment I was ready to count her among the dead when, to everyone's surprise, the male Tribute from District 11, Betel, buries a spiked mace into Gusset's head. It's a shallow blow but it forces him to stagger and release Otari. She falls and crawls away slowly as Gusset screams in a rage. Then something happens that I did not expect: Betel gently removes the sword from Otari's body and sits her up. He tears some of his clothing and plugs the wound in her side. He produces a flask and tips it to into her mouth. At first I think he's killing her softly, but a great portion spills out from the wound in her back, and I realize he's flushing out her wound. He tears more cloth and plugs the wound in her back. As he's lifting the flask to her lips again, Gusset buries the mace into his back with what looks like brutal force. He pulls it out and continues to bludgeon the Tribute. Finally, _mercifully_ , the cannon fires and Gusset moves away from his victim.

"These are the bloodiest Games I've seen," adds Millie Hatch. I nod in agreement.

"It would seem that the sort of progress the Capitol is interested in conducting is a sanguine progress toward gore and horror," I add to my nod. Millie steals a glance at me and then sips her tea.

"Does it bother you, then, that we are _enjoying_ these Games over a drink of tea?" I catch her glance.

"Our people used to practice more, perhaps _disturbing_ rituals than drinking tea while watching children slaughter each other for sport," I say carefully. "Perhaps this is the price we pay?" Millie snorts and takes another sip.

"Not too many Tributes left. It's a mercy that these Games will be over soon. Maybe we can _return_ to our less desirable rituals." I nod in agreement. The body of Betel has been removed. Gusset returns to the spot of the kill, only to find it is clear of Otari as well. All that is left are her blood marks on the wall of the building, which the camera takes careful note of as Gusset heads off in some direction unknown.

We follow Switch, twenty minutes later, who is tracking another Career – Lutris from District 4 to be exact – as he wanders down the alley from one of the small circles featured in the beginning of the Games. He carries with him a long sword, and the effort of carrying it showcases his muscled arms. Millie has plenty to say on that.

"He's got a good face too, Vel," she says over a second cup of tea and a small helping of my infamous lemon cookies. "The girls are all talking about him. If they let him fetch a wife from the Districts, I imagine one of our girls will be trying particularly hard to be noticed. _Which_ one, that's a mystery, but no doubt with how they're fawning over him, _one_ of them will have a master plan to catch his eye. We've got some of the brightest and cleverest, you know that."

"I believe he has to _win_ the Games first, Mildred," I say, matter-of-factly. "If he _doesn't_ , our girls' guile won't amount to anything in catching a husband of a Victor. And even if he does, I'm sure District 3 has plenty of beguiling girls that will present easier – if not _better_ – options against our girls." Millie tuts into her cookie.

"Can't a woman dream?" I shrug, watching Switch peer into an open door, then continue on when he discovers it is empty. "How old is the Prairie Dog Tyler girl? Drake's oldest?" Millie asks, out of nowhere.

"Too young for this fellow," I say, feeling a bit defensive of Moxie.

"Oh perhaps so, but she's beginning to grow into herself," Millie says back. "She's got the look of her mother about her, not to mention her father's strength. I saw her on the way to school, tugging behind that she-mule they keep. Both her sisters were on it. That's no small weight. I've seen her pick up and carry her middle sister, Sissy I think, a few times without trouble. If she's got her mother's genes, she's going to be fruitful." I hush Millie for the sake of the Games, but also for my own sake. I don't like the way she is picking apart Moxie; to me it feels borderline inappropriate. _I've got a lot to teach Moxie about being a woman_ , I think as we watch Switch peer into another doorway, clearly thinking it is another empty room, but instead he jumps back as a short sword jabs out at him. He swats the sword away – which falls to the ground – and then pulls out the bearer by his collar. It is the District 7 male, Froe, who is discovered. We both lean in closely to catch what Switch is saying.

"Where's Lu?"

"I dunno! Don't kill me, please." That's Froe.

"Have you seen him, tell me now."

"He's not _here_ , Switch! He's not _here_!"

"You'll alert me when he's near, will you?"

"I swear I will! I swear!"

Switch lets the boy go, picks up his short sword and hands it back to him.

"I'll be in that building, waiting." He points to the building across the alleyway. Froe nods. Switch stalks off to the building indicated.

"Did I miss them teaming up?" Millie asks.

"You can never know what deals are made during the Training." I suggest. "It's not always _just_ the Careers that band together."

" _Just_ the Careers?" Millie snorts. "I don't think they banded together this Hunger Games _at all_! Most of them have been picking each other off."

"Or they've been working alone." I finish for her. The camera seems to believe that something is about to happen because we're still watching the abandoned alleyway where Switch and Froe made their pact against Lutris. After ninety seconds, we see Lutris appear, stumbling into the alleyway.

"What happened to him?" Millie demands of the television, but I shush her. Lutris is about to enter the building where Froe is hiding. We see him disappear into it, then there are a few noises: one is a scream, another is the sounds of a fight beginning with a punch and the clang of a sword on concrete, and then it is followed with the sound of a sword whistling through the air and hitting flesh, which is answered with more screams. I shut my eyes and turn away from the screen – an act that Millie catches. I stick my fingers in my ears so that the ringing screams of agony cannot enter them. Millie claps her hands loudly when it is finished. I return my attention to the television. It is quiet. Lutris, painted with blood splats across his body, breathes heavily as he emerges from the building. He bears Froe's short sword. Millie gives me one of her trademark sarcastic grins. "He's dead."

I'm anticipating an assault from Switch in return, but we're all surprised – and I'm including the Tributes seen and unseen on our screen – when the cannon fires again.

The scene changes fast as we find the kill: a shock of short red hair faces the camera as its owner bends over the body of his latest victim: Otari. The camera takes us in closer and reveals that the killer is closing Otari's eyes with two fingers while using his other hand to remove the weapon he killed her with: a silver throwing star.

"He's managed to get her right in the heart," Millie volunteers as the camera focuses on the hit spot.

"By all accounts, it was a mercy kill," I say. "He's hit her directly in the heart. She'll have died quickly." I see that her wounds are still clogged by the late Betel's cloth. It seems that this particular day is shaping into a real endorsement for the Capitol's Hunger Games slogan: _May the odds be ever in your favor_. Frankly, the odds are in no one's favor today, and Millie reaches the same conclusion as I catch her glancing at me.

"I hope no one else dies today," she says for the both of us.

The broadcast ends two hours later. The three kills for today are all we are "treated" to, and when the Townies resume their daily lives again, Millie has taken the liberty of dozing off in her chair. I clear our trays and return to the store, flipping the sign in the window to indicate that business is open as usual. That is when I notice that there is a disturbance out in the town square. Several Peacekeepers are holding a short line of suspects at gunpoint while the Chief Peacekeeper – a man called Germanicus – barks at each person in the line. I would watch, but the sight has already triggered a memory for me, and I step away from the window and resume my position behind the counter of my shop. It isn't long before I hear the gunshots. I would have expected to hear screams of surprise and pain as well, but knowing District 10, no one stuck around to watch the prosecution. I cannot ignore what happens next.

One by one, I hear boots on the stone walkways outside and the sounds of shop doors being kicked in or bombarded by other means, and it comes as no surprise that my neighbors are visited shortly before I am visited. As it is happening, I call out for Millie, who appears moments later in the doorway. "Mildred, go home. There's been an incident in the town square and the Peacekeepers will be here shortly." She doesn't wait after we hear my neighbor's shop being entered, Peacekeepers' shouts breaking forth. A pair of Peacekeepers appear outside my shop door, and I calm but swiftly save the door by opening it before they can knock it down. The two Peacekeepers enter and one addresses me roughly.

"Where is the thief?" I shake my head.

"I don't know what you're talking about, ma'am. Thief? _What_ thief?"

"A horse and ranch hand were taken from the Ranches last night. A complaint has been filed and suspicion has been raised that known rebels are harboring and/or may have kidnapped the horse thief and the ranch hand in question. We are given permission to search your premises if we find you as a credible suspect to this investigation, so I will ask you once more and not again, where is the thief?"

"Ma'am, this is the _first_ I've heard about both incidents." I say with truth on my side this time. "You _may_ absolutely search my shop and my private rooms above if you think I am being dishonest." The Peacekeeper glares at me, and I look back at her. She seems to be deciding if I should be believed. I'd hold my breath, but I know that to do that would only indicate some guilt which I am innocent of, this time. Finally, she stands down.

"You will report any suspicious behavior you see immediately to Chief Germanicus, is that clear?" She barks at me.

"Yes, ma'am. That is clear." I say back. In a militant fashion, she turns and leads her small posse out of the shop with her. I follow her to the door and see that the town square has filled with folks who are surprised at this end-of-day interruption in their lives. Deep in my heart, I offer Thunderbird a prayer that this incident of horse-thievery has nothing to do with Drake Tyler. I do not linger at my own door, closing it and returning to the counter, but I am shaking now, haunted by the last visit I was paid by the Peacekeepers. I see Iffigenia's face swim into my waking vision and I try to block her out, but it seems that I must endure this one moment of haunting. She is gone soon enough, and when she's gone, she's taken my shaking with her. I offer the Flute-player a prayer of thanks, silently, amidst a background soundtrack of breaking glass, barking orders and, yes… the _all_ too familiar sounds of terrified screams as suspects are being pulled out into the town square.

"I suppose we live under dual threats, Iffy," I say to my sister's long-since dissipated ghost. "Those of the Capitol, and those of their lackeys."

I'm closing up the shop as the knock comes at the door. When I open it, I see Elka Tyler catching her breath in front of me. I usher the girl in quickly and bolt the door behind her. I fetch her some water to drink and sit her down at the kitchen table before I take a seat myself. "Talk to me, Elka dear. You've not run a long way here for no reason."

"It's…" she gasps. "It's… Daddy." My heart plunges to my feet. "He's not come back from work yet."

"Have the Peacekeepers been out to the Compound child?" I ask, attempting to keep my voice at level. She nods and I feel like my heart might sink into the floor. "And what have they done?"

"Nothing, Miss Vetta. They've done nothing. They're just circled around the Compound. I only slipped out before they had gotten assembled. Bess, Sissy and the boys are there though. Bess might have seen me leave." She takes a large gulp of water and then smiles at me. "We're going to be alright though, I know we are." I frown at her.

"Child, I don't think you're taking this seriously," I begin to say, but she shakes her head.

"No! It's going to be alright. The only reason they're here is because they haven't found him yet?" She seems very happy about this, but I can't understand a word she's saying.

"Talk some sense, Elka," I snap at her, my nerves finally getting the better of me. She doesn't seem phased though.

"Miss Vetta, everything is alright. They've not found him yet which means that they're not _going_ to find him."

" _Who_?"I demand. "Who are you talking about Elka? Your father?"

"Nope! Even better," she says. "The boy from the Ranches."

"Have you _seen_ him?" I ask, feeling myself begin to shake again. She nods.

"And the horse too. They came to us last night together. Only the horse was gone this morning, and the boy… well, his name is Deane and I suppose I can tell you _that_ without any consequences… _Deane_ had to run away on foot this morning. Bess and Moxie got in a little fight about it and after school, Moxie went out looking for him. _That's_ when the Games went on and after the Peacekeepers came, right around supper. They're not doing anything except circling the Compound. I would have run here faster and got here sooner if it weren't for all those cowboys out there on the road."

" _Cowboys_? On the _road_?" I ask. "What are _they_ doing?"

"Just standing there. There's about one cowboy every fifteen paces. It's kind of impressive to see them all out like that. I know they're looking for Deane and the horse he stole, but I think that if they haven't found him yet, that means they're not going to!" She drinks the rest of her glass of water.

"You sound very certain, Elka," I begin slowly, another shocking suspicion whispering in my head. I can hear flute music in the wind outside, even though it is light, and I shiver. "How?" That beautiful little girl gave me the biggest smile in the world.

"I _saw_ it, Miss Vetta. I _saw_ it happen, _just like this_." If I didn't have a strong heart, I would have collapsed right there. _Please dear Flute-player, don't! Please don't make her into one of them._ I plead, but the flute music in my head and on the wind only grows stronger, dancing as though the voice of the world were laughing at me from all around.


	18. Chapter 17: Moxie Tyler

_**CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:**_

Moxie Tyler

I heard them coming, the hoof-beat pounding into the ground feverishly. In the prairie, you have nowhere to hide until darkness falls, and it wasn't _that_ time yet. I lay flat in the grass and kept my head down, hoping it was enough to avoid detection, and all the while knowing that if I moved _at all_ , I would be discovered and my chances of entering the Hunger Games would have increased. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, a prisoner trying desperately to break free of its cage. I had my ear to the ground, so I tried to pass the breathless seconds listening to the ground shake under the weight of the horses and the intrusive rolling of the Peacekeepers' motor car tires as they broke the ground we lived on and tore it out. When I was sure the motor cars had stopped, I hazarded a look up and saw that the Peacekeepers weren't fanning out into the grass but were forming a circle around the Compound instead. Their backs were turned to me, but I wasn't feeling courageous enough to move just yet. I pressed my face into the ground again and passed the time until sunset remembering why I was in this position.

It was earlier this morning.

"Wait!" Bess called out as the ranch hand, _Deane_ , stalked off into the prairie with his pack slung across his back. I watched him go, wishing that the feeling I had was one of triumph: it was not, though. Bess turned on me. " _Why_ did you have to be like that to him, Mox?" she demanded of me. She pushed me and I let her.

"He's not good for us, Bess. He's going to get us in trouble!"

"I _vouched_ for him last night, in front of Dad! I _cleared the slate_ for us all! And now he's been chased away by _you_!" She pushes me again, angry tears in her eyes.

"Bess," I say, gripping her shoulders tightly. "Listen, Bess, he's from another world and it's a dangerous world, and we have no part in it. Just like he has no part in our world either. We can't cross those lines, Bess!" I try to reason with her, but she's only getting more upset. I release her and try to hug her but she pushes me away.

"He's got as much right to start a new life as we do, Moxie Tyler!" She says angrily. "He's got _nothing_! He had _something_ when he was at the Ranches: food, shelter, work, his brother! But he risked that to come out here and try again, and now you've taken even _that_ from him!" She stomps her foot and brushes the tears from her eyes violently. "I will _never_ forgive you if he gets caught and taken back to the Ranches by the cowboys." I decide, right then and right there, I will make things right for Bess, because I can't imagine being hated by her like she's promising to hate me, if he gets caught. I'll go look for him after school.

With those thoughts in mind, school and the viewing of the Hunger Games (mandatory) are a blur. We are granted recess to go home for the Hunger Games viewing, and the girls and I trek back to the Compound even though the screens in the town square are showing the Games. I don't really remember what happens in today's edition, but I'm sure it features kids dying. After all, that's the point of the Games. Once the television in the Compound common ground goes static, I get up and rush into the hovel, grabbing a bandana and a small parcel of goat cheese, some bread we were able to take from Miss Vetta, and a small bottle of water. I brush by Bess as I'm rushing out the door, and we exchange no words or glances. I hope she realizes that I'm doing this against my own will. Maybe she'll recognize the lengths to which I'd go for her.

The Compound is preparing supper as I'm leaving, so even though a number of my neighbors see me rush off, they don't try to stop me. It is okay: I could be going anywhere at this hour. No one will follow me because it's not practical to upset their supper preparations for a whim like that. I get to the Old Fifty Yards Tree and stop when something amiss catches my eye: a bit of the trunk has been broken off and replaced. I lift the broken piece off carefully and I discover the hollow beneath it. It's like a little cave naturally carved into the trunk of the well-loved tree. Whoever broke this bark didn't do it intentionally. That's how I know that it was Deane. I continue in a straight line, more or less. The path takes me past a mound with a cross on it, which also forces me to stop when I arrive at it. The letters "VST" are carved into it along with dates. If I wasn't clever, I would have thought nothing of it, but those dates and those letters are paired for a reason, and I take the moment of pause to connect them: it _has_ to be a mysterious gravesite. VST is buried here, if it turns out that those are initials signifying a specific person lying under the ground upon which the cross stands. I continue onward, thinking about who VST might be, and a wicked voice in my head calls out the name Violet Tyler, but I don't know anyone of that name so it is meaningless to me and easily dismissed.

The prairie rolls gently up a small incline, the summit of which elevates me less than two feet. It is enough to see the Compound – pretty far away now – and what is happening there. The dust cloud from the road rises menacingly and from it emerges the motor cars. As they whirl around to face the Compound, their doors open and Peacekeepers jump out. I can hear them barking but the words are lost to me at this distance. I begin to run back toward the Compound, but then I see the band of cowboys riding at the far edge of the Gaming Reserve toward the road. The dust cloud is settling now and I can see the cowboys begin to fan out along the road. The sun is sinking but it is high enough in the sky that the cover of darkness is not likely to come for a few more hours. I have a choice to make, and I make it quickly. I drop down and lie flat on the ground, hoping that in the excitement no one has spotted my figure all the way out here. It would take them no time at all to cover the distance it has taken me a little less than an hour to cover.

That was how I got here: on a favor I owed to Bess. It had _nothing_ to do with me and what _I_ wanted, in the end. I'm doing this for Bess, who I love. I have time, now, to think more about her and to hope that whatever is happening at the Compound, it won't affect her. I begin to use senses that I'm not accustomed to using: the feeling of the sun on my back, knowing if it is still high in the sky or if the slowly receding warmth of its rays are an indication that it is dropping more steadily. I _am_ listening to the ground to hear if the horses have stopped beating its earth, or if they are coming closer to capture me. I'm feeling the vibrations of the world to detect if the Peacekeepers are in their motor cars and if they are coming in my direction to take me with them. The answers to these questions are the same: no. I hazard another peek and see that the dust cloud is gone, the shadows being cast across the prairie are not (yet) dangerous to me, and the Peacekeepers have formed a large and unmoving circle around the Compound. I am not in danger, but I don't risk moving.

Sometimes I've had those dreams where it feels like someone is coming after you with the intention of doing you harm; my body reacts in only one way during those dreams: it freezes. I am incapable of any movement when I am gripped by those dreams, and I feel like I've strayed into such a dream now: I know I won't be hurt if I stay frozen where I am, but I also know that there will come a point when staying here will be more dangerous than moving. _If only the darn sun would go down faster,,_ I think to myself. Before long, I can feel the sun dropping more steadily. The small mound I was standing on some time ago is casting a much longer shadow across the prairie. It touches me and covers me half-way. No one has moved from the road where the cowboys are stationed or from the Compound, where the Peacekeepers are still standing guard. I want to wonder why this is happening, but I choose not to wonder for the fear that it might cause me. It seems that I am safe to move now, though. I begin backing up very slowly, always watching the Compound and the road, but no one moves toward me. I've pushed myself up to my knees, and I allow myself to rise from the ground, slowly, so that I am kneeling. There is still no movement toward me. Now, I'm risking myself rising up and pushing off the ground to stand on my feet. For _whatever reason_ , no one is coming after me. At last, I bring myself to fully upright position and find that I am safe to move about the prairie without being detected. That's when the sun slowly drops below the horizon, first burying an eighth of its mass. I feel as if I should tip-toe away as I move from my "hiding spot" and off toward the setting sun. It is brilliant as it illuminates the rim of the canyon and seems to set ablaze the borderline fence. If it hadn't been wet before, the goat cheese might have begun to stain a spot on my trousers. I don't really care too much because it is a spot I won't have trouble washing out when I get back to the Compound… _if_ I get back to the Compound. It's still surrounded, that much I can see. _Bess can hold her own_. My task is to find Deane for her, and I am devoted to it, so thoughts of those I left behind will have to be pushed aside until I find him. After the Old Fifty Yards Tree, I haven't found any traceable tracks to follow. I'm going on a whim, now, fighting the idea that I'm pretending to find someone I have mixed feelings about. I wish Bess hadn't threatened me with excommunication if I didn't strike out into the prairie. There is nothing for it now: she has done it, and now I'm making good on my unspoken promise. I am keeping a relatively straight course toward the canyon, and it seems to me that if I was seeking to run away, that would be the place _I'd_ go first. It is also just where I couldn't seem to get. I was making progress toward my destination, and yet it still looked so far away. The setting sun, which had been on my side, was now working against me, as was time itself, so it seemed. The long shadow off the horizon line now stretched out and encompassed most of my known world, and the sun's remaining third clung to the mantel of the world. I know that in less than thirty minutes, it will be dark. And _then_ , what? The canyon was closer, but how close I couldn't say. I made the decision to pick up my pace, figuring that at more than 350 yards away and in the falling dark, no one at the Compound wouldn't see me.

Night sounds rise around me. I might have been frightened if I hadn't grown up around them, but I did. I'm not afraid of anything. I tell myself that as they grow louder and seem to come from all around me. My edginess has added _enthusiasm_ to my quickened pace. I have a sense that the canyon will creep up on my when I'm not expecting it, but from where that sense comes I can't say. There are a lot of feelings and senses that are beyond my knowledge lately, like how I have felt when I watch Lutris but see Deane. I shake the thought clear from my head, _I think_ , because I feel uncomfortable about what it means, _perhaps_. Bess… I think she knew better; I think she knew before I did. I don't know why I think that. Maybe it comes from the same place that told me not to trust everything on looks alone, because looks can be deceiving. That was a saying, I think, and as it comes into my head so does the scruffy chin, the short hair in need of proper cropping: the only details of the boy who I am seeking. I scowl, but the image doesn't go away. I never really could chase him away. I could remember him better following the first time I saw him, and I believe that was because I remember well the people I dislike. But the second time I met him, a new thought passed through me: intrigue. Now that he intrigued me, annoyingly, his image in my mind was fleeting! All I could remember was the scruffy chin and the messy hair.

The sun set completely, and I strained to see through the twilight, gauging the distance from the canyon. I blinked, Deane came to mind. I blinked again, Deane came to mind. I tripped, threw my hands out but gripped nothing. Suddenly I am falling, rolling down a rough grassy slope dotted with rocks, and I can feel them nicking and digging into me. The grass gives way to dirt, dust and jagged rocks. My arms flail, hands reaching out for a purchase on the terrain, for any small purchase to slow my quick tumble. Just as I think I've snagged one, the ground falls out beneath me, propelling me into free-fall. All I can do is flail and scream.

I feel strong arms grip me and hug me close, bringing me to a sudden stop. A foreign body with foreign parts presses against me and pins me to the dusty ground. I begin to realize it is a ledge, jutting out from a rocky, sandy wall and falling away down a bigger drop. Rocks tumble over the ledge and crash at the bottom of the canyon. I breathe hard and try to regain my composure. The body pressing against me detaches gradually until it is but a pair of strong arms holding me. They linger: I want them to hold me steady. I don't understand why I want that, and I wish I did. They remind me of a time in the past when I would be held by someone comfortable like Dad or Miss Vetta (when the occasion arose). I regain my balance and push myself to my knees. The arms retract and that strange comfort is gone. "That was close, Prairie Dog." I look around and find the owner of that familiar voice. It comes from a scruffy chin and a head needing a proper cropping. Shockingly, a new detail comes to me: hazel eyes, not cold or unkind but hard.

"Deane," I say, my voice shaking. He nods. I sigh. "Never thought I'd say this but I'm glad to see you." He says nothing. I hand over some cheese, which he takes with a questioning look. "Bess," I say to qualify the offering. He nods and takes a bite. I feel that sense of intrigue take me again. I watch him until he catches me and glares.

"What?" I say nothing, defiantly. He looks away, chewing slowly on the cheese. I like the way he chews. I hate myself for thinking that thought. But I like the way he chews. "Thanks," he says, not looking at me.

"I think this means we're _also_ even," I say, amused with myself. He doesn't look at me immediately, but I continue to look at him. Finally he capitulates and looks at me.

"I was already even with you. Bess said so." I think I see his eyes twinkle a little. I shrug.

"I was saying that it's alright with me." I definitely see his eyes twinkle.

"She told you to come out, did she?" he asks. I nod. "And you wouldn't have come otherwise?" I nod. "Hmm. At least you're truthful." He looks away. I have an urge to correct him, to try to tell him that folks change their minds sometimes, and that it takes me a little longer than some to change, but the words don't come out and the moment, in all its delicacy, passes.

"Can I ask you what happened that day?" I begin. He looks out across the canyon and then looks at me.

"You want to know? _Really_?" I nod. "Okay. We went back to the Ranches and had to explain that a fox had caught three egg-bearing hens and had torn them to pieces. Thatch thought it was a believable story; I wasn't as sure. I was right. Our Cow-man didn't like the story my brother had to tell him, so he whipped him. He made me watch as he whipped him. Twenty strokes for each hen lost." He picks up a rock and tosses it into the canyon. The empty echo reverberates within me and I think within him too. I share this sin paid for by his brother. "I was commanded to shoulder his bloody body to the infirmary to have him taken care of by a gold-skinned woman from the Town. I did not leave his side. He never complained." He tosses another rock. "He's all I want in life… my brother. I don't expect you to understand."

"I do." I said quickly. "I love my sister more than I can tell her. And I told her once, because I needed her to know." He's watching me carefully. "Do you know what happened?" He shakes his head. "She was asleep, so she never heard it." He stays perfectly still, watching me.

"She heard," he says softly. "They always hear."

"We can't go back to the Compound," I say after a pause. "The Peacekeepers have surrounded it. There are cowboys watching over the roads. They're looking for you." I watch him, but he doesn't react. "I can't go back either. They'll question me, and I'll tell them if it comes to torture." The look in his eyes seems to reflect a feeling of betrayal, or perhaps I feel like I'm betraying him by being honest. "I won't let them catch you. I think there will be a day when I can't run with you, though. Is that okay?" He considers me for a long time. I take out the pieces of bread and hand one to him, blushing, just to get him to stop looking. He's far enough away from me that he has to move to come and get my offering, and I look away as he comes for it, only to be surprised when he continues toward me past the bread offering and comes to sit beside me. He puts an arm around my shoulder, which tickles me somehow, and then hugs me a little closer to him. I place the bread in his lap, both thrilled and not sure what is going on.

"I'll watch for intruders. You can use my shoulder as a pillow. I won't hurt you." He picks up the bread with his free hand and takes small bites. "In the morning, we'll figure out something else. Okay?"

I lean my head against his shoulder in response. It feels wrong, and I decide I don't care.


	19. Interlude

_**INTERLUDE**_

"Go back," Cor commanded the Gamesmaker. She obeyed, pushing her glasses up and looking up at him shyly. To her, he was like a god. She fancied herself to be privileged like a nymph or a mortal woman (perhaps even a _queen_ ) to whom one of the Olympians had come – as she termed it – to _have his way with her_. Since he'd followed her to her seat around the interactive map of the arena, she'd been day-dreaming the details of how he was going to do this, beginning with him talking dirty to her. With his tone of command, however, she was beginning to transform the scenario into one resembling her being dominated by him, and since she had been chosen to be a Gamesmaker for her creativity, she blushed at the intensity of her unexpected pleasure in imagining him commanding her to assume very compromising positions and do some shockingly inventive things to him. "There," he barked pointing to the moving dot on the map. "That's the girl, right?" The Gamesmaker looked down at the screen just beneath her fingertips and touched a button that read _District Identification_. The Tributes' names and District numbers arose upon the map in front of them, above all the stationary and moving dots in her specific wedge. Above the dot Cor was pointing to arose the following: _District 10 – McKay, S._ Cor clucked his tongue in disappointment. "That's the boy," he said.

"You're interested in the girl?" the Gamesmaker asked. Cor shot her a look.

"Have you been listening to _anything_ I've been…" the Gamesmaker waved him off before he could finish.

"There's another way," she said without looking at him. She was focused on the screen at her fingertips, pressing this and that button, illuminating and darkening spots along the wedge she controlled. Finally, she sighed and pushed back from the map. "She's not in my jurisdiction."

"You're useless," Cor spat at her and stalked away. Hovering her fingers above the screen, the Gamesmaker clenched her jaw, and then pushed her chair back again and got up, making her way toward the Head Gamemaker. "Sir, can I speak with you a minute?" she asked, standing at attention. He gave her an absent-minded nod. "In _private_?" she added. This time, he looked her full in the face.

"In case you _hadn't_ noticed, I'm trying to run a to-this-point-successful Hunger Games. What do you want, Tamora, _Queen of the Goths_?" Tamora shot him a look so piercingly cold that he softened his own. He knew she disliked the nickname and he knew he'd used it for that very same reason. She had a dangerous mind, though, and he had given her credit for it in the past but could sense that the same mind would turn on him if he wasn't careful.

" _I_ would like authorization to make a mutt designed for a _specific_ kill," Tamora said, finally.

"A kill of which Tribute?" the Head Gamemaker requested.

"McKay, Flaxie, District 10."

Cor pushed through the double doors leading into the Viewing Room; it was the annex adjacent to the banquet hall from where they'd begun the Games, and it was equipped with television screens on three of its walls, screening the Games in progress, while the fourth wall was devoted to those sponsors buying gifts for the Tributes they were supporting. This operation was carried out much like a registration might be: a long table separated the gift collectors from the sponsors and on that table were cash boxes and portable computer tablets. Cor strolled up to one of the cashiers (at least that was how he chose to name the gift collectors) and tapped once on the table to get his attention. He was another shy-looking young man whose nametag read, **Demetrius Pavarol**. Demetrius took Cor with one look and picked up his tablet. "How can I help you?"

"I'd like to sponsor a Tribute," Cor barked at Demetrius. The latter wasn't fazed by the gruff tone. He'd been dealing with unsettled and somewhat displeased Capitol folk for a long time, so one more was not a shock for him.

"Which Tribute?" he asked without much tonal inflection.

"McKay, Flaxie," Cor said quickly.

"District?"

"Ten." Demetrius began tapping on his tablet screen, occasionally swiping one way and another without saying anything more to Cor. After forty-five seconds of this awkward silence, Cor tapped on the table again, impatiently. Demetrius gave him a cursory glance but said nothing more and continued to tap and swipe. "Well?" Cor demanded after another thirty seconds.

"There seems to be a problem, sir." Demetrius said slowly. "McKay, Flaxie is already being exclusively sponsored." He put extra emphasis on the word _exclusively_ so that Cor would get it into his thick head that this was an untouchable Tribute. Nonetheless, he rolled his eyes when Cor asked,

"What do you mean, _exclusively sponsored_?"

"Okay, the word _exclusively_ means that no one else but those invited may participate in an event or situation. The word _sponsored_ means…"

" _I know what they mean, dumb ass_ ," Cor banged both his fists on the table, startling the other gift collectors. Demetrius blinked at him and waited for another harmless, idiotic assault. He didn't have to wait long. " _I want to_ sponsor _her_."

"Sir," Demetrius began, firmly. "You may _want_ to sponsor her, but the fact is you _can't_. She's already being sponsored by another gentleman. Can I assist you in anything else?"

"WHO?" Cor leaned forward very close to Demetrius. " _Who_ is sponsoring her _exclusively_?"

"I can't tell you that, sir. Can you please stand back?" Cor listened but sneered as he leaned back on his side of the table. "Thank you. Perhaps you would like to sponsor McKay, Seeder? He is also from District 10. High commodity he is, having no sponsors yet and being from the third poorest District. Good investment, _most_ betting tables say. Poor odds but they're improving each day he's alive." Demetrius made the smallest effort to raise a single eyebrow toward Cor. "What do you say?"

"Fine! What does he need?" Cor hissed at Demetrius.

"He _has_ a good stock of food but he could use more than a length of rope. Weapons are coming in at close to triple the cost from last year, and we're auctioning off anything bigger than six inches." Cor was not pleased with this news, which only added to his temper waxing foul. "A poisoned blowgun dart is beginning to sell at $450. Should I put your name into the auction?"

" _A_ blowgun dart?" Cor hissed again.

"Actually, it's _a_ _ **poisoned**_ blowgun dart," Demetrius corrected him unnecessarily.

"May the Fates shit on your grave," Cor responded. "What is the cost of _a_ blowgun?"

"It's running between $900 and $1,250" Demetrius said matter-of-factly. Cor's response caused the entire room to gasp out of sync but simultaneously. Demetrius blinked, beginning to be amused by this amateur. "Should I take that as a 'no' then?" Cor was beyond words. He merely banged the table with his fists again and stomped away. "Have a good day," Demetrius cracked a bemused smile, " _Sir_."

Cor pushed through the doors leading into the Gamemaking Room and found his way to Tamora. She looked up at him, and this time it was a look devoid of innocence. "Round two," she joked.

"Sorry," Cor said painfully. "I was an ass before."

"Yes, you were," Tamora agreed.

"So can you do that thingy again where their names and District numbers come up?" Cor asked. Tamora gave a breathy laugh.

"Come on now, that's my party trick. He asks if I can do it again!" She laughed louder and some of the Gamesmakers around her wedge smirked. Tamora winked at Cor and returned to her work on the screen before her. She had a pen-shaped instrument in her hand and she was putting the finishing touches on a wild-looking dog. It was lean and had a particularly evil look to it. Cor decided it was in the eyes that this creature was most harrowing. Tamora finished the drawing, and then she put down the drawing instrument (called a _stylo_ ) and pinched the drawing with her index finger and thumb, pulling the image up on a hologram. She examined the creature, scrutinizing for imperfections as its image spun slowly. Finally, she nodded approval and tapped a button on the screen. The creature shrank and travelled from the hologram to the map of the arena, landing in the rubble courtyard at the center of Tamora's wedge. It stretched, and then followed its nose, tracking one of the dots. Tamora stretched her hands back and laced her fingers behind her head before acknowledging Cor again. "Sorry, what was it you wanted from me?"

"Could you show me the names and District numbers of the Tributes again," Cor began before adding a quick, "please?"

"Sure," Tamora said without moving. Cor shot her a look and she chuckled. "Oh, you mean _now_?" She moved into action again, more deliberately slowly than before. Cor watched as the identifiers appeared on the map. He was also fixated on the creature Tamora had just brought into the arena. It was tracking the scent of a specific dot: _McKay, F – District 10_.

With the Peacekeepers surrounding the common ground, Bess found the mandatory viewing of the Hunger Games more ominous than ever. Wherever she looked, there were Peacekeepers. They had arrived the evening before, barking at the residents of the Compound, pulling some women and children out from their hovels and destroying other huts in pursuit of a horse thief and a runaway ranch hand. Bess, ever the optimist, prepared Striker and Lenox for the assault, but when the Peacekeepers came to their hovel, the interaction had been very polite – if brusque. Amidst the confusion, the Peacekeepers hadn't seen Elka escape though Bess didn't miss it. After ordering the remaining Tylers to line up inside the Compound, the Peacekeepers interrogated them one-by-one, beginning with Bess – the oldest Tyler present.

"Name, surname first."

"Tyler, Bess."

"Miss Tyler, have you seen a horse and rider come through here recently?"

"Recently? I can't tell you," Bess had said, attempting to avoid a lie.

" _Why_ is that, Miss Tyler?"

"Well,, we live right next to the Gaming Reserve, and I see cowboys and ranch hands on horses all the time, so _recently_ , yes, but if you're asking me if I've seen _the_ horse and rider, I can't tell you."

" _Fine_. Miss Tyler, have you seen this boy recently?" The Peacekeeper had held up a drawing of Deane. As Bess had looked at it, she could recognize Deane in it without trying too hard, but she had also begun to weave a web of half-truths that had put her in a specific mindset. She looked over the picture, searching for the weakest part of the question put to her, and her brain had been working hard to find a way to say – truthfully – that she had not seen this boy. "Miss Tyler?" the Peacekeeper demanded, shaking the picture he had produced.

" _This_ boy?" Bess bought a few seconds with her question. "Uh, _no_. I haven't seen _him_ recently." The Peacekeeper frowned at her.

"You are _positive_?"

"Always," Bess smiled, finally telling the whole truth.

Thankfully, Sissy, Striker and Lenox could answer entirely truthfully because none of them had _actually_ seen Deane ever. Even so, as the Peacekeepers interrogated the remaining Prairie Dogs, Bess breathed in gasps, wondering if one of them _might have_ been around when Deane had come to the Compound. In the end, if they had, no one gave him up. The Peacekeepers circled the perimeter of the Compound and remained there overnight. In the morning, they were relieved by a fresh set of Peacekeepers. School was suspended for the day though no word was communicated between the Town and the Compound about the search for the horse thief and the kidnapped ranch hand. With nothing else to do, Bess tried to curb her own growing anxiety by entertaining her siblings, but at some point they found that sitting around and saying nothing was the best solution. Since their dad had not returned, the small stock of food they had gathered diminished rapidly, and by lunchtime Striker and Lenox were getting irritated by their growling empty stomachs. Bess and Sissy had known hunger before, but with the twins' new experience of it, the infection spread to the girls. At the allotted time, the Peacekeepers entered the Compound and pulled its residents out into the common ground to view the Hunger Games, and as Bess looked around, she could see that the foul grip of hunger was widespread. Bess took in the narrow faces, the grim expressions on them and the odd child holding her stomach. She noticed signs of other things too. For every third person there was a Peacekeeper watching over them. _Do they_ need _to guard us_ , she thought. _It's not like_ we're _going to run away_. A Peacekeeper caught her staring at them and tapped her boot with the baton in her hand. Bess looked away quickly, not interested in knowing what that baton felt like. Anyway, the Hunger Games were beginning; day 5.

Thatcher looked up. He was laid out on the cement floor of the slaughterhouse, flayed and chained. His lip was swollen and bleeding and he felt very alone as his other senses kicked into place. The previous day had been like a nightmare, beginning with the shock of waking up in the barn and finding Deane had gone. Although he'd tried to pull the weight of both his brother's chores and his own, it had only succeeded in stalling the inevitable. When Mr. Burliss barged into the barn to find that the rumors – Deane Scythe was missing – were true, he'd taken out his rage on both Thatcher and Biter. In the end, it was Thatcher that the cowboys had been ordered to take to the slaughterhouse. He'd been chained there and kicked hard several times before Mr. Burliss began interrogating him. Thatcher couldn't remember the interrogation, except that he had only one answer to all the questions asked, and that answer was "I don't know, sir." As the kicking intensified and he drew closer to losing consciousness, Thatcher vaguely remembered leaving off the "sir" at the end of his answers, which only made Mr. Burliss even more irate. And just before he completely lost consciousness, Thatcher remembered Mr. Burliss saying up close and very harshly, "I'm going to kill you, boy. And no one's going to care because you _don't_ exist." Thatcher wondered if his response was "I don't know, sir." He figured he'd said the very same more than three hundred times.

Not surprisingly, the restless sleep that fell on him took him to a place where there were no slaughterhouses, no spurred boots digging into his starved frame. There were no men like the cowboys or Mr. Burliss, or Mr. Farnsworth before him. Deane wasn't _there_ either, but that pretty Prairie Dog girl was; he could remember her face. Opening his eyes and finding that he'd slipped back into the nightmare, however, made him groan and attempt to return to his dream world by closing his eyes. It was the responding groan that brought him fully into the present. Thatcher could have sworn he heard Deane groaning nearby him. He couldn't move except to whip his head around this and that way, but his arms were pinned at an angle that made it impossible to see from where the groan had come. That was how the nightmare increased, believing but not knowing that the groan belonged to his brother, who was either in the process of being killed or was being brought to the edge of death by torture only to be kept alive – in the same way that Thatcher was certain he was being treated – and at some point in the hours that slipped by unmeasured, Thatcher realized that he was actually praying for his own death. Never before in his life could he recall a time when he had prayed, and yet at this very moment the only desire he had left – if that groan belonged to Deane – was to die. He fell unconscious again, perceiving nothing except for the inconsistent groaning sounds beyond his vision.

The very first action of the Hunger Games: Day 5 focused on the creature Tamora had constructed and placed into the arena. Cor watched as this rabid wild dog muttation tracked the female Tribute of District 10.

"You should get us some popcorn, pretty boy," Tamora joked, sitting back in her chair and watching the action in the arena replica before her while other sponsors and Cor watched it as shown through the cameras and displayed on the plethora of television screens around the Gamemaking Room.

"That's sick," Cor said, unemotionally. Tamora grinned.

"You know, I designed an eighth of this arena, under the supervision of the Head Gamemaker, of course. I know which buttons to push to make this building explode, or that wall crumble, or to make certain mutts appear _en masse_ at any given part of my wedge." She studied Cor's expression as he comprehended her words. "But _this_ mutt that I just got authorization to make, I think I like her the best. She's got the killer instinct of a Bloodhound and a Rottweiler, but she possesses, also, the instinct to track her prey and to guard it. Who knows what she'll do when she finds her target? Maybe she'll kill it quickly… maybe she'll strike it's throat and then leave it to bleed out… or maybe she'll chase it into another Tribute who can finish the deed for her, but _only_ after having scared the poor victim to death." She grinned and Cor grimaced, and that made Tamora grin even more. "All I've told her to do is find Flaxie McKay and kill her."

As she spoke, the rabid dog mutt prowled the alleyway with her nose to the ground. And then, suddenly, she picked up the trail. It was as if a magnet had found its attracting pole and was being drawn, irresistibly toward it. The very first thing the dog mutt did, once on the trail, was to check the first building she saw. The camera followed her into the building, a very small room with a flickering overhead light and a stock pile of swords, behind which lay a sleeping Tribute. The dog mutt went to him – Switch, from District 3 – sniffed him a few times, bared her teeth in a snarl before determining that it wasn't the Tribute she was sent after, and then she turned around and went back out, leaving a suddenly awakened Switch behind her. The camera followed her out into the alleyway again where she was picking up the scent of her quarry much better; _Maybe she can sense the fear coming from Flaxie_ , Cor thought. It proved to be an incorrect thought as the dog mutt continued to look in every succeeding building on the alleyway, and each time she found _something_ – a cache of dirks, daggers and throwing knives, water bottles and flasks filled with pure water, and in one building she came upon some very interesting herbs and other greens that Cor couldn't recognize but which must have smelled strongly to the dog mutt – but none of those things were her prey. Several doors down from Switch's revealed hiding place, she picked up the trail indefinitely and began trotting toward its origination. Skipping past several doors, the dog mutt entered one on the right side of the alleyway and the camera that followed her revealed a small room with a water pipe leaking onto its warped wood floor. There was an empty pantry to the right behind a warped island table with several broken stools, and to the right was a cache of glass jars containing clear liquids within. On an exposed shelf about four feet off the ground, in a sleeping bag, lay Flaxie McKay. She was well out of sight from the entry but the dog mutt knew her smell too well to mistake her motionless – actually unconscious – body. The barking that came from the dog mutt sent chills up Cor's spine: it was supposed to sound unnatural because there was nothing natural about the animal, and yet it was so hauntingly _un_ natural that Cor couldn't help but feel fear. And neither could Flaxie as the barking yanked her from sleep. She saw the dog mutt snarling and baring her teeth, and her eyes went wide.

But her fatal flaw was that she _moved_. The dog mutt pounced, bounding, unnaturally, from such a far distance, using the pyramid of jars as leverage to lift her into the air and land with her front paws on Flaxie's shelf. Flaxie couldn't get out of her sleeping bag fast enough – _literally_. The dog mutt hoisted herself onto the shelf by pushing her hind legs off the ground and rising to the shelf almost effortlessly. Flaxie was tearing at the sleeping bag when the dog mutt joined her on the shelf. She kicked at the animal and managed to upset her footing enough to make her lose balance and slip off the edge, but it was only one hind leg that hung loose over the edge and the mistake was easily corrected. The dog mutt was even more furious that her prey was fighting back. She snapped at Flaxie, showing her sharp teeth and her ferocity, but she made no real effort to break skin or to bite the Tribute. That scared Flaxie even more, whose eyes couldn't _get_ any bigger. She struggled even more in her attempt to get free of the sleeping bag, and as the dog mutt lashed out a clawed paw, Flaxie held the bag like a shield, letting the dog mutt make a gash in the fabric. It looked as easy for the dog mutt as if a person was running a knife through clear water. The gash separated the sleeping bag and Flaxie tumbled out, landing on her palms, face-first. She scrambled to her feet just as the dog mutt sprang and landed on her back. _Now_ the dog mutt began to bite. She dug into Flaxie's back with her claws and buried her teeth into Flaxie's neck. The howls from the Tribute matched the howls from the dog mutt.

Flaxie spun and slammed the dog mutt very hard into the wall behind her. It began to buckle from the impact. The dog mutt released her jaws for a moment, yelping as her spine collided with the brick wall, but it was momentary. Seconds later, she had buried her teeth into Flaxie's neck again. This time Flaxie gave it all she had, slamming that creature as hard as she could into the wall. The wall collapsed, knocking Flaxie and the dog mutt over as a shower of broken bricks rained down on them. The dog mutt was no longer attached to Flaxie's back, and in the moment that they both realized their newfound independence, Flaxie scrambled to her feet, blood streaming from her neck wounds, and half stumbled, half crawled to the entry. The dog mutt had a slightly harder time dislodging herself from the debris, but she managed to get herself a step and a half behind Flaxie. Flaxie was out the door and stumble-running down the alleyway in search of another place to hide, but the dog mutt bounded after her, leapt, pounced and brought her down again. Flaxie pushed against the bricks of the alleyway and rolled herself on top of the dog mutt, vainly grabbed for a loose brick in the wall near her, _miraculously_ caught hold of one and yanked it free, and then used what waning strength she had to reach behind her and smash the brick into the dog mutt's head. Simultaneously, Flaxie rolled side to side on top of the dog mutt, which was trapped beneath her and seemed to be losing her grip on her prey. Finally, Flaxie struck the dog mutt in the eye, tearing a gash across its face, including its iris, and with an awful yelp the dog mutt released her. Flaxie rolled away from her foe and tried to push herself up but discovered she had no strength for the task. She rolled onto her back, slipped into the shallow gutter on the side of the alleyway and lay there, breathing heavily and bleeding swiftly. The dog mutt made no further attempt to attack her but was clawing at its face and whimpering pathetically. Flaxie tried to look over at the dog mutt, but another rumbling noise caught her attention: from the building she had escaped, in domino effect, the roofs began to cave in, followed by the outer wall, and finally when it could no longer support the weight, the alleyway walls buckled and broke. All along the alleyway, bricks cascaded down onto the street, and as they reached the dog mutt and Flaxie, the dog mutt tried to get up and limp away. Flaxie turned her face away from the falling bricks and closed her eyes. The brick wall collapsed, burying the dog mutt and raining bricks across the alleyway at Flaxie. Dust and brick particles hid the alleyway from visibility as the stage came crashing down.

At last, at long, long last, the cannon boomed.


	20. Chapter 18: Cor Lee

_**CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:**_

Cor Lee

"Long ago, there was a fire. It burned from the apartment upstairs, starting in the kitchen and incinerating the wall via its electrical wires. There were two women sleeping in the apartment below, their personal assistant – a man by the name of Marton – also, and in a bedroom shared with his two guard dogs was their son – a young boy called Ancora. As the house caught fire above, its residents panicked and fled the building in several different ways: one leapt from the balcony – a ten foot drop to uneven pavement below – and shattered his knees on impact; another kicked through the back door, located in the kitchen, and rolled down two flights of wooden steps to the safety of the enclosed garden in the back of their property; a third froze on first sight of the wall of flames in the kitchen, and then promptly pulled down the hidden stairway that led to their attic, climbed into that sauna and pulled the stairs up after him. The second escapee came to his senses and ran around to the front of the building, climbed the three entry steps and busted down the door, screaming 'FIRE! GET OUT!'

"Chaos followed as the two women rushed to dress themselves, grabbed a few of their possessions and hurried toward the front door. Had the dogs not woken up and begun barking, Ancora and Marton might not have made it out, but the Fates were with them and the dogs, in their alarm, pulled both the man and the boy to safety across the street. Ancora wore only his pajamas and had managed to grab only his identification card on his way out. Marton was almost fully dressed lacking only a shirt. The four downstairs residents huddled across the street from their building with the two frightened dogs – being cared for by Ancora – and the second escapee who was trying to support his fellow housemate. Moments before it happened, the two escaped residents from the second floor wondered where their third housemate was until a massive fireball shot through the skull of the building: against the fiery background, the silhouette of a huddled figure appeared for a count of less than five seconds. Flames engulfed him without a natural human utterance. Three hours later, after a small bucket brigade formed of neighbors and local persons, the fire died. It had charred the upstairs rooms, incinerated the attic and all that was hidden up there, and it had begun to eat away at the ceiling of the ground level rooms before being put out. There was nothing left to salvage from the disaster. Marton secured a single room rental for the six survivors, and as an icy dawn broke on the Capitol, all six found themselves huddled for warmth in the center of a cheerless, abandoned tenement in a part of the capital city that had been either forgotten or passed over. Years prior to the fire, the Capitol had endeavored to rejuvenate its splendid city by refurbishing, remodeling and rebuilding large sections that had been disturbed by the Rebellion and had endured the depression of the Dark Days. This section of the city had been left to crumble.

"What is the point of telling a story in ancient history?" I laced my fingers and set them in my lap, avoiding Demetrius' emotionless glare. "I don't know," I conceded, feeling a little foolish. "I felt compelled to share my own death with someone." I meant to say, _With someone who knows a lot about death_ , but since I had already apologized for my rude behavior minutes before launching into a story from my past, I thought such a statement might come off as tongue-in-cheek or back-handed. I made myself look up at Demetrius Pavarol, and I was surprised to find that he bore sympathy in his gaze.

" _Your_ death?" he asked. I nodded.

" _My_ death. After that moment, Ancora began to change into a completely different person. All that's left of that boy is half his name," I replied. Demetrius worked it out in response. "Anyway, what's past is past."

"Did I hear you correctly in saying that you have two moms?" Demetrius asked. I nodded, smirking. "Oh," he said before gulping air like a fish in water. I figured he'd get to whatever it was he was trying to say. He did, finally. "What was _that_ like?" I shrugged.

"Marton was sort of a surrogate dad, insofar as he was another man around and he was older than me. But it didn't really matter after the fire: two months later we found a new place to live but never had enough money to pay Marton to say. He negotiated other forms of payment – most of which I was ignorant to – and two years after that, I moved away after both my dogs died," I look down into the dregs at the bottom of my teacup. "It was kind of sudden, them both dying."

"So, McKay, Flaxie's death brings all this up for you," Demetrius guessed. "I mean, I'm trying to make connections here."

"Yeah," I said a small bit peeved by his business-like tone and his clinical precision in getting to some deeply submerged point to the conversation.

"What were your dogs' names?" Demetrius manages a softer tone. I understand that he understands subtleties.

"Anto and Eopa," I say. Demetrius breaks into a grin.

"Sounds familiar," he says and finishes his cup of coffee. "I have to go back to work. Are you okay?" I nod, feeling foolish again.

"Go. Thanks for listening." He nods and doesn't look back. I decide not to watch the rest of the Hunger Games today. Actually, my mind isn't made up about how much or little I want to watch. To a certain extent, I'm _supposed to watch_ because I'm a sponsor, but it comes to me now that these are hopeless roles to play. Some sponsors treat this like a sport where they try their best to win but if they don't they wave off their failures with the notion that they'll try harder _next year_.

The café where I'm sitting is inside but surrounded by windows from the floor to the ceiling. It's designed to sit _over_ the lake, at the heart of the Capitol, so it feels like we're not on land at all when we're sitting inside it. The lake water is constantly moving, and it conjures a sense of meditation amidst the constant motion in the streets, shops, store fronts, banquet halls, concert venues, the Circus, the President's Mansion, the game rooms, casinos, and so on and so on. When I look out across the waters, the only reminder that I am in the Capitol is the bright coloring of those apartments and villas that were remodeled so long ago: their unnatural hues dance on the moving water's surface. I break from my trance and signal for the server – a busty woman who looks like she's in her early 20s and sports half a head of cotton candy pink, the opposing half being colored a silvery white – receive the bill from her and place three gold and copper coins of varying sizes into the palm of her heavily manicured hand. She tries a smile but I beat her to it, dismissively. I leave briskly amid the sounds of the Hunger Games, as televised _everywhere_.

The Capitol is spectacular, if you remove its people from its streets and walkways. Surrounded by majestic grey and blue mountains, snow-capped for ten months of the year, its _periboli_ tell the history of the city since its construction and expansion. The _periboli_ are the divisions of the city, and they differ architecturally and socially; each of the fourteen periboli maintain the social strata of this tiny district. My peribolus, _peribolus alban_ (the White Precinct) curves around the foot of the mountains in the southeastern-most corner of the Capitol. Most of its four-storey apartment buildings are in bad repair, though their red clay tiled roofs are still a reason for some adventurous Capitol folk to venture down its empty streets. I remember how lively it was before the fire, when my neighbors and I would run up and down the twisting, ankle-breaking alleys playing games of hide-and-seek and the ever-popular kill the carrier (a "harmless" kid's game in which a pair of carriers were given a treasure to defend, and they had to evade capture while sneaking across the line into enemy territory and return. If a carrier was captured, his or her treasure would be taken and he or she would be "killed"… taken out of commission… while his or her team fought the other team to regain their treasure and "kill" their carrier. Essentially, the game had no ending as carriers who were "dead" could only be revived after their treasure was recaptured. Three "kills" rendered the carrier "dead without resurrection" and a new carrier had to be selected). I remember ground-level shops of many different kinds: patisseries, coffee shops, tea rooms, joke shops, confectionaries, and once there was a chocolaterie, which sold cups of hot chocolate mixed with a special spice that made you feel warm and spicy at the same time (great for the cold months). I remember the fire that swept through our peribolus and the two neighboring periboli. When I look at my life retrospectively, fire has been the major transition for me every time. Our periboli garnered "untouchable" status after the first fire. After the second, the one that left me homeless for two months, Capitol folk deemed the southeastern corner of the city the "Inferno". I suppose that makes me a demon, escaped from Hell and circuiting the civilized city.

I follow the curve of the lake ( _peribolus avon_ … the Water Precinct) and wander to the elbow of the Tiberii Delta, where the sole river in the Capitol – the River Tiverus – wends away from the lake and cuts a sinuous path past the Theatre Tiberi (an awesome amphitheater in the upper stretches of the city center) and empties into Victoria's Fountain, a small pond filled with slow-moving water and lined with dreamy willow trees. From Victoria's Fountain, it is a short five block walk to the banquet hall, President Snow's massive mansion and, of course, the Circus… more _properly_ called the Avenue of the Tributes. Rumor has it that President Snow dislikes the term "the Circus" because it conjures images of ancient brutality from a civilization a few millennia ago… a civilization preserved through traditional Capitol naming rituals. Whatever… if the Capitol doesn't want to be associated with that civilization, perhaps President Snow should steer it in a direction that is less celebratory of "gratuitous" violence… more _properly_ called the Hunger Games.

I stop at the elbow of the Tiberii Delta and look out across the lake from here. Across the river and along the coast of the lake – heading toward the dam in the southwestern-most peribolus of the city – is the only swimmable body of water: it is also the place where I took Atoka after the opening of the Games. From here, the breakwater barrier looks like a walkway across the lake, constructed hastily by shoving together large rocks and throwing down flat stone slabs on top. I lean on the railing and take in this ridiculous city of contradictions. Old architecture clashes with the new, water and land cut into accidental soil filling this elusive crater between the mountains, and more electric light than necessary competes with the natural sunlight above. I sense that I am merging with the contradictions of this city wherein I became a man, by fire; and also now, when I believe I am alone and yet I feel the presence of another coming close. She touches my shoulder.

"The whole Capitol is in an uproar," Atoka's soft voice says behind me. I turn and secure her in my vision. She's wearing a silvery dress that lifts and falls on the breeze off the lake. Beneath it is a silver-white gown with an empire waist, fastened by a rich purple cord just beneath her breasts. The sleeves are short. Her smile lingers not. "Ask me why," she says, taking a place beside me and looking toward the breakwater barrier.

"Why?" I ask, to appease her and to break the silence between us.

"District 4 is fighting with District 2 at the Cornucopia," she says, her tone void of any excitement or interest. " _And_ Seeder's just been killed by District 8." My heart drops.

"Seeder McKay," I stammer. "He's yours?" She nods.

"Two in one day," she says to voice what we're both thinking. I put a conciliatory hand on her shoulder and find that she doesn't pull away. "It wouldn't have mattered if you _had_ sponsored them," she says after two minutes. "They had mediocre scores in training and they're just from District 10, so no one really cares about them."

"I don't think that's true," I try, but I'm not convinced I believe it myself. "If they'd made it through today, I think that the Capitol would have felt compelled to cheer for them for making it so long."

"You're right," she concedes. "And that's why it was District 8 who had to finish his competition. He needs the sympathy of the Capitol folk." She looks at me, searching my eyes for something to hold onto; something to claw out.

"I don't even know District 8's name," I say.

"Gusset." I nod but she doesn't see because she's already turned her back to me again. I drop my hand from her shoulder and she surprises me by grabbing it in her own, lacing her fingers between mine. It's the sudden intimacy that stuns me. I don't know what to say or do so I watch the long shadows crawl across the rock face of the mountains across the city. The day is waning. "Ask me how it happened," she commands me.

"How did it happen?" I say. She strokes my hand with her thumb, slowly.

"Gusset knotted a length of rope he'd found in one of the buildings and stuck broken fragments of brick between the knots. Then, he snuck up on Seeder and flagellated him to death. It was slow, it looked agonizing and it looked like Seeder chose to die." She stops stroking my hand. "I want to die." I take her into my arms without knowing why other than it is an instinctual act. She accepts the embrace, burying her head into my chest and squeezing me tight. I kiss the top of her head and hold her close, trying to convey that she is still safe with me. "I can't go back to District 10 and face another set of parents who _hate_ me because I couldn't save their children."

"I'm not going to hurt you," I say softly. "Stay." She sighs.

"You know I can't. I'm not a Capitol resident, and you _are_."

"That's true," I say. " _But_ being a Capitol resident has its perks. I can leave my District and visit yours." She looks up at me.

"Don't say that," she scolds.

"Why?"

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

"What?" I'm taken off guard by her comment. "What do you mean?"

She buries her face into my chest again and sighs, keeping like that for a few minutes. Then she balls her fists and punches my chest, breaking away from me and putting distance between us. "Never mind," she sighs, walking slowly away toward the Riverwalk. The long shadows have merged into a gradually falling dark. The lights of Nvohg Café and several other neon cafés flicker on across the river and old lampposts dotting the side of the Riverwalk are climbed and lit by lamplighter boys, giving the walkway a special twilight romance. I double step it to catch up with Atoka as she sets on the Riverwalk proper.

"What promises can't I keep?" I ask when I've caught up with her. A thought is growing in my mind but I don't understand it or why it's even there, or where it came from – though it feels like that place where I bury all the things that have ever happened to me – and I hold that thought in wait for her reply.

" _Will_ you come to the Ranches and visit me if it turns out that I have to leave tonight?" I nod and upset something in my chest… fluttering; it feels foolish. " _Honestly_?" she demands. I nod twice. She stops, heaves an enormous sigh and then puts her arm around my waist. "Put your arm around me, Cor," she says quietly. I put an arm around her shoulder. She promenades with me like that, side by side strolling arm in arm. In the shadow of the Theater Tiberi, she leaves the path and pulls me with her toward the foyer of the building. It is built of even rows of highly decorative arches, their pillars rich and sleek, marble or highly polished stone. To our left are the doors leading into the narthex of the theater wherein tickets are purchased on one side and a small chic wine bar offers the best vintages. She tries one of the doors and finds it is open, though no performances are running during the Hunger Games (what other entertainment do you need?), so she pulls it open and slips into the dark room. I follow, letting the heavy door close behind me. We grope around in the gloom until she finds the door into the theater and pulls it open with some effort. Moonlight slips into the narthex through the opened door, and in its beams she becomes a silhouette. I hold my breath, taking her in. Even as a shadow, she is lovely and elegant (if rough around the edges). "Come on," she beckons, whispering. I listen, captured.

Ghostly pale seats rise in terraced rows before and around us as we step into the main gallery of the theater. Atoka leaves me and rushes to the stage, bounding up its four steps. The waning moon is her spotlight, and I am her audience enchanted and entranced as she lifts her arms gracefully and glides across the stage like some ethereal creature – an angel, perhaps. "All Victors need to develop a talent," she says, breathlessly. "Mine was learning to dance." So she dances. At last the music stops playing in her head and she comes to a stop, lowering her arms to rest around my neck. I've been drawn in to her performance, moving as she moves. I lift her up and off the stage, letting her down slowly, gently. As her feet land on the ground, she pulls me against her and kisses me. I shudder, closing my eyes and chasing away the images that plague me, and when I open them again, she's still there, in my arms. I lean in and return her kiss, locking her in my embrace, falling, falling and falling more. I steady myself and follow her lead as she runs her hands up and down my back, pressing her body against mine and breathing softly into my ear. I feel the full strength of her danger, now: it is her power to strip me of my defenses and leave me vulnerable and victim to her desires.

When morning comes, I am alone.


	21. Chapter 19: Thatcher Scythe

_**CHAPTER NINETEEN:**_

Thatcher Scythe

They came in the early morning before the sun rose; they swarmed around me, their faces contorted in the mold of laughter. _Laughter_! Who could bring himself to laugh at times like these? Still, the three women that danced around me were laughing, and it wasn't _at_ me. One was an older woman with dark hair in two braids, her face etched with lines and her eyes deep with knowledge. Her laugh was slow and breathy, as if she needed to think about laughing before she did it. When she looked at me, it wasn't _at_ me, it was _inside of me_ , down to the deep part of me. When she looked at me, I felt naked, completely bare and vulnerable. The middle woman was barely a woman; she looked young, maybe older than Miss Atoka but not by too many years. She had light brown hair that twisted into two loose braids and fell to her bodice. She bore a slight resemblance to the older woman, as if she might be a younger version of her or perhaps a younger sister, but her face looked smooth and her gaze didn't plow into the depths of my being but effortlessly saw my soul through my eyes and while she seemed to share my secrets with me, she also gave to me a sense of warmth. The third figure was a girl with an easy smile, a very young face and a single braid of dark brown hair falling down her back. Her eyes were a mix of grey and blue, and when they turned on me they gave more than they took. She gave me strength and security, courage and clarity. She did not look like the other two women, but I figured this was because she was so much younger than them. They all wore garments flowing at the sleeves and tied at the waist with belts of different shades of blue: the girl wore a light blue belt, the young woman wore a royal blue belt and the wizened woman wore a midnight blue belt. As they turned, they danced, and as they danced, their garments rippled as if lifted by some invisible breeze; and when their garments lifted, they changed colors: the wizened woman seemed to wear a garment cut from the fabric of the night sky, studded with shimmering stars and with a sash of milky white cutting across her figure. But when she turned, the garment seemed to soften and become lighter, like the sky as dawn approaches. The young woman wore a garment that seemed to have been cut from the fabric of a sunset sky: its colors were a brilliant and beautiful play on light and illumination amidst a growing dark. But when she turned, the garment seemed to burst with a concentration of light, like the sky as the sun peaks over the horizon. The girl wore a garment that seemed to have been cut from the fabric of the midday sky, brilliant in its illumination and yet also dull in its consistency, in its impenetrable blue. But when she turned, the garment seemed to become grey and its brilliant illumination dampened, like the sky as storm clouds rush in and blot out the sun. When the wizened woman turned, her belt seemed to shimmer as if it had collected the stars from the sky and used them as embellishments. When the young woman turned, all the colors of the world seemed to collect upon her belt. When the girl turned, her belt seemed to change into droplets of rain falling into puddles. They danced and laughed and bore into my soul, into the deep, taking and giving as each was enabled.

I woke writhing in pain. My life had seemed to dance between nightmares, and that isn't to say that these mystical women were nightmares, but it is to say that I was confounded by them and felt it nightmarish that I should have no hint as to who they were while they knew _everything_ about me. I tried to open my eyes but only one was willing; I'm sure, now, that the other is swollen beyond the point of repair. I'd forgotten that I was being tortured until it stopped and Mr. Burliss leaned down to tell me, "I'm going to kill you and no one's going to care because you don't _exist_ anyway." If he's planning to keep his promises, he's taking his damn time in doing the deed.

I close my eye and try to conjure the three dancing women but there's nothing for it. They've gone. Instead, I try to find some sense of relaxation, but that's just as futile a try as the first. I know my wrists and ankles are chained to the floor, but it feels like they're being pulled apart from my body and from each other. Pain is a constant reality for me, and it has been such since Deane ran away. When I woke up and realized he was gone, I scolded myself for not stopping him the night before when he asked me to run away with him. I should have taken that proposition as a warning, but I thought Deane was more rational than that. Now, everything just sucks.

I might have said yes: I wanted to say yes. I said no because I was afraid. What if we ran and got caught? Would they shoot us on the spot? Would they bring us back and torture us? Would Mr. Burliss leave us to the "mercy" of the Peacekeepers? What would have happened if I ran away with him? I guess we'll never know now because I didn't. What _has_ happened, clearly, is that I've been caught, interrogated and tortured _anyway_. If Mr. Burliss is to be believed, I'm just waiting to die. I guess, in the long run, the worst scenario is the one I'm _living_ through.

Someone groans near me, pulling me from my self-initiated pity party. I hope it's Deane… but I've tried to see who it is and I've only failed at it so far… but I can't see him and I don't have the fight in me to try what I've failed to do over and over again. All I can do now is hope. I hope it is Deane. Whatever comes next will be easier to endure in the knowledge that Deane is with me, to know that my big brother is here. It seems selfish to hope that because if he _is_ here then he's being tortured like I am, and I don't wish more harm on him, especially not the sort of harm I'm experiencing. But then again, as Mr. Burliss reminded me, I don't _actually_ exist. No one cares if I die. I care. Death seems so boring to me. It's as ugly as a big old period at the end of a sentence, rather than the more attractive, slender arching and graceful comma. With a period, there is more to come _after_ it, but whatever _that_ might be it isn't related to what came _before_ it. With a comma, whatever comes _after_ it seems to be a completion of what came _before_ it. The things that came _before_ this comma I'm living through right now, all of them included me and Deane: we've stuck together through our parents' deaths, boiling hot summers and burning feet, through starvation and the shock of being captured and sold into servitude, through Mr. Farnsworth's style of discipline and through Mr. Burliss's sadism. We've done it all together from the night our parents died to the night Deane ran away. Whatever comes _after_ the comma I'm living through, I want it to be related by the binding of our brotherhood. I want to come through this passage _with_ Deane. I love him. That admission is too crude… doesn't say enough… never did. I love him, anyway.

"Deane," I try to call out. Instead of my voice, I hear a gargled moan. "Deeeane?" I try again, but the result is the same.

"Thatch?" I think I hear my companion say. I know that voice, but it's not Deane's, I think. As I strain against my restraints, the doors burst open and Mr. Burliss appears with his lackeys. They release me violently and I curl up into a ball, massaging my wrists.

"Hold him open," Mr. Burliss barks and I'm forced onto my back as the cowboys pin my wrists and ankles to the ground again. Mr. Burliss kneels down on the side where my eye opens so I can see him. "It's your lucky day," he hisses, the heavy scent of tobacco assaulting my nostrils. " _Sorry_ ," he continues. "I've got to keep you alive." He chuckles. "Well…" he draws out the "l". "I don't _have_ to, but I can't spare the cowboys tonight, and you won't shut your trap at night, and we're entertaining upstairs tonight, so that's bad for business." He disappears from my sight, but he doesn't leave. When he speaks again, it is to my companion. "Your lucky day too, newbie. Boys, set him loose too. And get that damn traitor Scythe to the infirmary." The cowboys let me go and I contract again, closing my good eye. I hear my companion being released, and then, everyone's gone except for my mysterious companion and me.

"Thatcher?" My companion is by my side. "Thatcher, I'm going to lift you up." I try to nod but everything is sore, so I give up halfway. He lifts me up and my whole body cries out in agony, but I'm not able to make any noise but gargling groans. "Shhh," my companion says. "It's over now." _It is indeed_. I pass out.

"This will hurt, boy." It is a woman's voice, familiar but forgotten or from a time recently forgotten. "Hold his hand girlie." I feel a small hand in mine. The small hand rubs my palm gently, and then it moves to my wrists, where the small hand massages with a sense of care. It's the first good feeling I've endured. A warm cloth, wet and aromatic, covers my swollen eye and immediately it stings in the biting kind of way. The girl continues to massage my wrists, cooing softly.

"It's okay. You're okay," she says. Her voice is soft too, and I believe whatever it says. I concentrate on her voice and her massaging touches until the sting is gone. The cloth feels cold by the time it is removed. "You're so brave," she says. "You're doing so well."

"Try your eye, boy," the familiar woman's voice says. I try it, expecting for nothing to happen, and slowly the world comes into focus through not one but _two_ eyes. The first face I see is the little girl's. She has rich brown hair in a single braid down her back. Her eyes are a mix of grey and blue. Her skin is weathered but smooth, and she wears a dawning smile. I know this face… from a dream.

"It worked!" she beams over at the older woman. The older woman, gold-skinned with straight black hair in two braids falling to her shoulders and lines etched into her forehead, gives a quick smile before looking down at me.

"It worked," she says. "How do you feel?" she asks me.

"Like Hell," I say, expecting to hear groans and gargles, but instead I hear my own voice, weak but clear.

"Good," the woman says. "Your throat will be sore for a little more than a week, so no shouting or straining your vocal chords, and try and talk as little as you can." I nod. "What's your name?" she frowns down at me.

"Thatcher…" I take a breath. "Scythe."

She nods. "I fixed you up before, Thatcher," she says, still frowning. "My name is Velvetta Cordwip. You call me Miss Vetta. Why did they beat you up like this?"

"My brother," I begin, taking a breath. "He ran away." I need another breath. "And they think I," and another. "I know where he… he is."

"But you don't know, so they beat you until you almost died." Miss Vetta says. "And here we are," she sighs and finishes with, "here we are bringing you poor boys back from the dead." She shakes her head. "Elka, is this the boy you saw?" Miss Vetta asks. The girl nods slowly.

"Yes, but not here." Miss Vetta picks up a bottle of something aromatic and uncorks it, dipping it quickly onto a clean cloth. She leans forward and rubs a generous amount of the sweet-smelling ointment on my upper lip. I breathe in and feel very drowsy.

"That's right, Thatcher. Breathe in and it will put you back to sleep. You will dream, and the dreams will be pleasant _and_ foul. When you wake up, you must call for me and tell me what you've dreamt. Is that clear? Nod if it is." I nod. "Good." I'm beginning to feel sleep coming upon me but I struggle for a moment to keep it at bay. I need to know who my companion is, and she'll know if anybody does.

"Miss Vetta… who was it that… brought me up… here? Who… was… he?" I fight to get the question out. Miss Vetta frowns and shakes her head.

"Thatcher, love, _no one_ brought you up here."

"I know you… you treated… treated… him. He … was being… tort… tortured … with… me." I'm falling into sleep. Miss Vetta takes my hand in her own rough hand and she clasps it gently.

"Thatcher, sweetheart, you are the only ranch hand I've treated. If there was someone else tortured with you, I'm afraid to say but he's not with us anymore." I close my eyes because they are too heavy to keep open. My head spins as I spiral down into sleep again, but it spins as well because I know Miss Vetta is wrong. The arms were real, the groans were real, the presence of another person in that horrible room… it was all _real_! And if she's right… if there is no one else in the infirmary… then…

"He's … … dead?" I manage to say through the haziness of sleep.

"Sleep," is the only reply I get, and in no time at all, that is exactly what I am doing.


	22. Chapter 20: Bess Tyler

_**CHAPTER TWENTY:**_

Bess Tyler

In retrospect, I was stupid. I got myself into this situation: here in a spare room at the town hall, a Peacekeeper guarding the door and loads of folks standing around out in the streets, their anger pretty easy to see and hard to miss, all this is my fault. It began with Flaxie's death. We were gathered in the common ground with a circle of Peacekeepers choking the rim of the Compound when Flaxie died. She struggled with the ravenous dog mutt as the buildings around her collapsed. I thought she had defeated the dog mutt when the buildings fell on top of the creature, but it wasn't a long-held victory, if it can be counted as a victory. The ironic thing about Flaxie McKay's death is that she hadn't harmed or even touched a single Tribute before she was mercilessly attacked and killed by that dog mutt. _That_ is why folks around the Compound got hot and bothered. Other Tributes that participate in the Hunger Games and actually play them as they're supposed to, well _those_ folks are murderers just as much as the next Tribute who ends up killing them (if that happens). Flaxie was innocent, and she was murdered anyway.

I looked around the room I was being _detained_ in: it's bare and quite ugly with a wall half painted in green, a color fading from its exposure to light. The light source is a single window that's shuttered at this moment, _for my safety_ , according to the Chief Peacekeeper. He seems to be under the illusion that I am in danger. Maybe _he_ needs a detaining room for himself! _Thinking like that is only going to get you into more trouble, Bess_ , I think. _The Peacekeepers are here for a reason_. I shrug it off. _Not a very good one_ , a new internal voice comments; it sounds like Moxie's voice and it throws me off. I have _never_ had two opposing voices in my head before… that I can remember. I've always been looking up.

I looked around the common ground after the cannon fired: folks were awash with mixed emotions. Most of the adults carried their emotions just beneath a thin veneer of indifference composed by years of experience with split-second choices that led to life and death. Reading their faces, I can imagine what they might say to me if I plucked up the courage to ask them what they're feeling: "In this District, she'd have lived another day, that's what." "Y'all be careful with wild dogs now. Y'all never know what's _really_ in them." "She didn't deserve to die." "She didn't deserve to die." _She didn't deserve to die._ I wonder if anyone in that arena _deserves_ to die, and my question is quickly answered when we refocus on a battle at the Cornucopia. Here's how that situation was set up, because someone had a really generous sponsor in the Capitol and those gifts made it possible for the battle at the Cornucopia to happen as it did, and that is like this: last night, Lutris, the Career from 4, received three different gifts from his sponsor(s). I don't know if he has more than one because knowing how outrageous the prices are for gifts, sending three from one person means that person has money to spend, and it seems more likely there's more than one sponsor for Lutris, but I have no clue how any of _that_ works, really, so I can't say. Lutris's first gift was an oval-shaped thing he could hold in his hand. It looked like a small type of flask to me, stopper and all, but I learned differently when the battle at the Cornucopia began. The second gift was a pair of attachable soles for his shoes. They looked like they had spikes and suction cups, and he must've known what they were because he strapped them to his shoes so that they were on the bottom part. Later, when the battle was about to begin, I saw how he used them and I was notably impressed: _those_ things seemed like the best gifts. The third gift I recognized well enough: dynamite sticks. Later, as the assault at the Cornucopia began, I found out that they weren't what I thought they were because they didn't really _explode_ as much as flare and smoke a lot. These were the gifts Lutris got that helped him in the battle at the Cornucopia.

As we refocused to the center of the arena, I think everyone was reminded that one of the most vicious killers in the Games was hiding inside that horn of empty. Flicka was another Career – being from District 2 – and her skills at killing were fine-tuned though her methods seemed aggravated and wholly animalistic. She'd torn out chunks of flesh and smashed a Tribute's head to a pulp on the first day, and then she'd dug into the flesh of two other Tributes and smashed their heads together, _shattering_ their skulls, a day later. She'd licked blood, sharpened her nails and overall adapted the look of a crazed menace. I suppose if anyone in the arena _deserved_ to die, it was Flicka, and there inlay a problem because it was dawning on me, as I watched the battle begin, that the innocent died faster and without any mercy while the most egregiously guilty survived to fight (and possibly to _win_ ) the Hunger Games. How could anyone possibly survive the Games after participating in the destruction of twenty-three others? I felt my optimism falter like a beautiful and healthy animal sensing a trap near her. The battle began. Lutris fastened the things to his shoes and began climbing the Cornucopia. The spikes seemed to dig into the sleek metal of the horn, but no visible marks were made, and the only sounds we could hear were the suction cups sticking and unsticking against the metal. When he'd reached the top, he crawled to the gaping mouth of the horn and leaned over the edge. The cameras changed to capture the mouth, showing impenetrable darkness inside. Swiftly, Lutris uncorked the flask-like thing and chucked it into that darkness. There was a hiss as it fell inside, and in the momentary gloom, we saw Flicka. Then, everything exploded at the back of the Cornucopia. Against any other metal, this grenade would have proved superior, but against the innovation of the Capitol, the explosion was contained by the strength of the metal. It propelled Flicka from her hiding place outward as though she was being shot from a cannon. She was a mess when she landed; fragments of sharp material and the remnants of food stuff stuck to her body: she was bleeding from the shrapnel that cut her skin. Yet, when she picked herself up, her eyes seemed to glow red and yellow. I was _sure_ she was crazed. She fixed a gaze on Lutris atop the horn and let out the sort of piercing, bone-chilling howl that you never forget (and I never will. I shiver just recalling it) and charged toward the horn. Swiftly, Lutris pulled out the dynamite sticks, lit them and tossed them at the charging Flicka. The sparked up and flared relentlessly, smoke billowing from them and stopping Flicka in her charge. She coughed, and then she doubled over and began hacking. Whatever was in that smoke billowing from those sticks, it wasn't normal. Lutris used this time to come down from the Cornucopia and to remove his long sword from the strap slung across his back. I thought this would be an easy kill, but as always with Flicka (and the Hunger Games in general) I was wrong. Her speed and force were truly amazing. She recovered in time to swipe away the first attack and as Lutris was recovering, she pounced on him. The sword was thrown from his hand as she knocked him to the ground and raised her razor-sharp nails to claw him to death. From his boot, Lutris pulled out a jagged edged dirk and plunged it into Flicka's side. She writhed and howled, rolling off him and clawing at the knife. Lutris sprang to his feet and managed to recover his sword as Flicka withdrew the knife and licked it clean. I never understood why she thought that blood was something to be licked, but then there were many things about her that I'll never understand.

I can't imagine how she managed to get several cuts on Lutris, facing him with a comparatively small blade, but amidst ducking and jabbing, Flicka managed to shred Lutris's shirt. He tore it off in one swift motion and in the next he was slashing a long gash across Flicka's face. It was long and deep, and it threw her off. She stumbled back, blood leaking from the fresh wound, and retreated. Lutris didn't follow. He dropped the tip of the sword and heaved stuttered sighs. _Is it over?_ Flicka tackles him from behind, trying to stab him. Lutris is able to fight her off but that's only because he's naturally stronger than her and even though she has momentum in the assault, he has more skill with the sword. They struggle a long time, each getting cuts in on one another. Lutris gets himself into a position to throw Flicka off him, with spikes on the soles of his shoes digging into her stomach. He is about to kick her off him very hard when she slashes at him again and makes him howl and grab for his ankle. As he tries to stem the flow of blood trickling from his Achilles tendon (apparently, as Phinehas Gideon will inform us later), Flicka switches her grip on the dirk and jams it directly into his eye. It's a hard stab but not hard enough that the blade comes out the other side. He falls, limp, the grip of the dirk protruding from his eye, and Flicka – with a chilling wicked laugh – sets to work clawing up his face. He's trying to reach the sword, but she's all over his face, shredding his skin – her gruesome specialty. I was just waiting for the cannon to sound: _how can anyone survive the treatment she's giving his face?_ But then someone pointed out his hand: he's gripping the sword and he's bringing it toward him, slowly; now he's raising it; now he's adjusting his grip. It happens so quickly that several girls and women scream in surprise; Lutris bellows an awful battle cry, and then uses his thighs to flip Flicka over onto her back. Now as he is atop her, he raises the sword high and plunges it into the middle of her chest, offering a terrifying, animalistic cry of triumph as blood gushes from his wounds on his face. The cannon sounds immediately and a hovercraft appears just as quickly, ordering Lutris off his kill. He doesn't listen but drags the body away out of reach of the hovercraft. Eventually the craft disappears. The battle is over, we think.

I don't understand what he does next. As the bare-chested Lutris stands, it looks like he has a dagger sticking out just below his midsection. In the shade of the rear side of the Cornucopia, he withdraws the sword from Flicka's corpse, pulls the dagger from his eye-socket, taking most of his eye with it, and then unfastens his trousers. There is blood everywhere, from his chest and face and where his eye used to be. He stumbles but manages to drop to his knees. His trousers fall off and next he is ripping Flicka's clothes off her legs. The women around the Compound make disturbed noises and cover the eyes of the children near them. I look away voluntarily, but the groaning sounds coming from the screen are hard to block out. There are other sounds too. I don't understand it but something deep inside me tells me that what is happening is really upsetting and shouldn't happen. He groans among other sounds – sounds like those that your clenched fist makes when you pound it against your palm – and it's very upsetting for everyone, even though most of us don't know why. His groans get louder and that _other_ sound gets louder with them. Just when I can't take it anymore, the feed cuts away from whatever was happening. I look around at the women, and I've never seen them angrier in my life. Whatever _just_ happened, it has upset them very deeply. In sympathy, I am upset as well.

We've changed locations in the arena. Seeder is there in his hiding place. The shadows have fallen on the arena, so there is a cascade of feeble light coming in through the window. Seeder has fixed himself a good meal from the food stock that he's hording. The light in the window changes and he doesn't notice it until the variant kicks in the glass and appears, his back to the camera. We can't see Seeder now, but we can hear him. "No… no! Guss, we had a deal! We had a _deal_! Guss _noooooo_!" The other boy has a bow and a quiver of arrows… from where? I don't know. He's knocked an arrow in the bow. He draws back the string. " _Guss! Don't! Guss, please!_ " I can't peel my eyes from the screen even though we all know what's about to happen. The arrow whistles through the air and very quickly buries itself into flesh. Seeder's pleas are silenced, but around me the women of the Compound launch into action. Most of them scream, some keen, others push their children out of the way, and a handful of ready and willing Prairie Dogs grab whatever is nearest to them and attack the Peacekeepers. Instinctively, I pounce on Sissy and Lenox. I flatten them beneath me and pull Striker down with us as soon as the brutal popping sound of a volley of gunfire cuts through the chaos. Everything after that is a nightmare I don't want to remember.

We're all dragged into the town square. "All" is generous: there were about forty-seven of us living in the Compound, and now, counting only those who can stand on their own, there are nineteen. Of that nineteen, the Tylers comprise four. That's a little more than 20%. The Townies saw us coming and closed up their doors and windows very tight. I wonder if they thought we were going to be exterminated in the town square and they just had no intention of watching. Whatever their reasons, all I know is that if I hadn't forced my siblings down, there would have been less than nineteen of us. The unceasing sounds of screaming answered by the mechanic popping of machine guns was bad, but after a minute of it, you get used to those sounds. When it stopped, though, that was really horrible. At least the sounds of gunfire deafened the sounds of screaming. Without the gunfire, though, we were left with a chorus of moans, screams, cries of agony, all of that. The Peacekeepers had administered black bags to our heads and forced us apart as we were roughly rounded up and pushed down the dusty road from the Compound to the Town. If you fell or couldn't move on your own, you were shot. When we reached the Town, our black bags were removed and we could see each other again: the _survivors_. What a hateful title and word, _survivors_ … survivors of _what_? The Peacekeepers forced us into the town hall and we were separated into rooms all over the building. I got pushed up to the second floor, and the room I am in now used to be shared with four other women and girls. They went to the interrogations before me, and they haven't come back. I'm pretty resolved that my fate is now that I will die here. I suppose my only wish now is that I see the people I love before I am killed.

No, I don't _suppose_ it; I _know_ it. I _know_ my last desire of this world is to see the people I love one last time. Moxie, Sissy, Elka, Lenox and Striker, Dad, Miss Vetta, Deane, and Thatcher.


	23. Chapter 21: Thatcher Scythe

_**CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:**_

Thatcher Scythe

I dreamed of the three dancing women again, but as they danced, there was no joy or laughter in them. They all wore long faces. When she looked at me, the older woman seemed to wear a veil behind which I couldn't see her face. The younger woman didn't smile when she looked at me, and her eyes seemed to pierce the depths of me. The girl didn't make an effort to look at me, and her dance was wobbly and uncertain as if she was caught in the midst of indecision. The entire experience unnerved me: they weren't supposed to be melancholy, especially since they were figments of my imagination. I wanted them to change, but I didn't know how to force that change. I was violently shaken out of my restless sleep as their dance began to pick up. They were turning faster and faster, and from the middle of their circle, I thought I could see a deep blackness forming: I could feel it sucking in the things around it, including me, and when I was yanked upside down by my ankles and dropped on my head, I had thought that I was being pulled into this menacing blackness. It was not yet dawn, so the world was still gloomy. The cowboys kicked me a bit while Mr. Burliss stood and watched with his arms folded across his chest. Finally, he held his hand up and the cowboys stopped. I let out my breath and waited for the next round of violence. It didn't come.

Mr. Burliss motioned for the cowboys to leave and closed the door of the bunkhouse. A few ranch hands were awake during this visit, but they didn't show much interest in what was going on. Out of the corner of my eye, I made out one figure sitting up in his bunk and paying close attention. Mr. Burliss caught me trying to figure out who this person was, and he strode toward me, his boots hitting the cement of the floor distinctly. I saw the spur seconds before it bit into my cheek, and as I tried to lift my hand up to the wound, the heel of his boot broke my nose and the toe swiftly answered, colliding with my throat and rendering me unconscious.

A leather whip bit into my bare back and brought me into consciousness. My arms were tied to leather straps and held me up a few inches off the floor. As such, the whip, when it bit me again, set my body swinging slightly. I looked down, gritting my teeth, and counted the bones in my ribcage.

"Where's your brother?" Mr. Burliss hissed into my ear. I couldn't see him because he'd approached me from behind, but I could smell the extra strong scent of tobacco mixed with some saccharine sweet perfume. Both were overpowering, and together I felt nauseous. "Tell me!" he demanded. I clenched my jaw and refused to say anything. I didn't know where Deane was, so saying nothing was the same as repeating that I didn't know. He stepped back and let the whip tear into my back a few more times. When he stopped, I felt blood trickle down.

"Where's your brother, Scythe?" he hissed again. I offered nothing more than a shrug. The beating that followed caused a few more parts of my back to open up and give forth blood. He came back to me and asked again, "Where's your brother, Scythe?" and again I offered nothing but a shrug, and so the beating continued. This third time it was more vigorous, and I was certain that there was no part of my back that wasn't shredded beneath his whip. I could feel a steady flow of blood leaving my body, and I felt light-headed. "Where's your brother, boy?" Mr. Burliss spit on me when he hissed this time. I was clinging to consciousness, so he mattered very little to me. My limbs were going numb from the wrists down. He stepped back again and resumed beating me, directing the blows to my spine and making my eyes water as the whip lashed at my bone. I squeezed my eyes shut and shuddered as the faces of the three women danced before me. The whipping grew more intense: I could hear it ripping through my flesh, and I could hear the blood soaking the whip and spraying it across the floor as Mr. Burliss drew the weapon back before setting it upon me. The faces dancing before me were an eerie distraction. Altogether the women were refusing to look at me, and their dance continued to pick up speed. I couldn't see their legs or feet anymore; they were a swirl of black and grey, merging into each other, spinning at the pace of a tornado. Suddenly, the girl's face came into sharp focus: she looked at me with the same eyes as the girl who had massaged my palm and wrists. I gasped, felt an awful sting in the middle of my back, opened my eyes and saw her face in my waking vision. _Run!_ She screamed at me, her entire face expanding and darkening, until it was only the light in the whites of her eyes that remained. I lose consciousness.

Water is splashed on my face and body – which is how I come to consciousness again. It is ice-cold water: _literally_ , it has chunks of ice in it. I look up as another cowboy tosses a bucketful of ice water on me. I wince as the chunks of ice hit me. A third bucketful is tossed; I shiver and brace myself for the fourth. It doesn't come. Mr. Burliss lifts my head up by the chin, very roughly, and he shows me the baton he has in his hand. He grips my chin hard. "Tell me where your brother is, you son of a bitch. He talked to you; he _told_ you where he was going." He gets really close. "Now you're going to tell _me_ or you're going to die for it." I'm not sure how I manage to hock up enough phlegm for it but I smile at Mr. Burliss and let loose a massive bloody ball of spit that hits him between the eyes and forces him backward. He brushes his face clean and curses me using as many words as he knows. Then, the beating begins. His baton is wooden and his first few strikes hurt beyond reckoning. I think he might have broken some bones in my body, but I'm not sure of it; I am sure I would rather die now, slip into sleep and never wake up, but when I make this silent confession to myself and close my eyes, _willing_ it to happen, I see the face of a different girl before me. She's pretty, has darkening hair with golden roots, and she's carrying a pair of dead hens in each hand. She's surprised to see me, but the look in her eyes spells out joy. She winces as I feel another bone break beneath the cruelty of Mr. Burliss' baton. At least I _think_ it's a bone breaking. I try to focus on this pretty girl, but she seems to beckon to me, _sleep_. I lose consciousness again, except that I can feel the baton as it strikes me. Each blow seems fainter and fainter, but I can still feel them.

More ice water jolts me away; more of Mr. Burliss in my face. He's sweating. "You plotted with him. He told you where he went. _Tell me now_ and your life might be spared." I have no strength left to hock up phlegm or to do much of anything except look at him. He takes this as offensive and brandishes a pair of metal clips connected to electric wires. He clips them to my fingers, which I can't really feel anymore, and then clips the pair on the end of each wire to a lanky electric machine with a rotating knob in the middle. He smiles back at me and then turns the knob, sending violent jolts of electricity through me. I can feel my fingers _now_. After a minute, he stops. I hang my head, defeated. "Where did you brother go, Thatcher?" he asks again. I say nothing. He turns the knob a little farther and more electricity courses through me. "Where is he?" I give him nothing. He turns the knob farther still: _a lot more_ electricity courses through me. At this point I feel like my insides are being fried. I _want_ to die; I'm not _afraid_ of dying now. I simply _want_ to die. When I lose consciousness this time, it is with the goal of never waking up again. I have no visitors when I black out: I am alone.

"Don't," I hear Biter say but I don't see him until I open my eyes. He's holding my head down, so I can't see him well, but he looks scared and after he releases my head, he tiptoes around me. I try to watch him, but when I move my head, he forces it down again. " _Don't_ ," he hisses at me. I'm confused but I don't say anything because when I try to open my mouth, I can't _and_ I taste blood. I try to follow him but I get caught on the floor below my feet: _literally_ , it is a pool of blood. Drops of blood join it from behind me, but unlike drops of water, when the blood falls to the floor, it merges without fussing the pool it has joined. Biter is on his knees now, trying to mop it up. He's making little or no progress. I can't do anything except hang from my wrists and try to watch him work through his futile task. I would prefer passing out than living through this agony, because now my senses are coming back to me and the pain is unbearable. The ghostly voice of the dancing girl whispers through my brain, _Run-run-run-run_. Finally, Biter seems to be finished with his task. There is no pool of blood below my feet but there is a large wine-red stain on the cement floor. Biter moves out of my line of vision and picks up a white bucket. He brings it back and throws its contents on the floor. The chemicals burn as they waft up into my eyes and nostrils. He pushes the liquid-chemical around so that it spreads all over the stain, and some of it begins to fade a bit, or my eyes are playing tricks on me. Whatever is happening, I begin to cry on account of the powerful sting emanating from below. I close my eyes: _run-run-run_ ; I open my eyes: tears and stinging. Biter appears in front of me, sees me crying and takes a dirty cloth, rubbing the tears away. It helps but doesn't stop me crying. He sighs. "Let's get you down." He unties my leather bindings and catches my body as it slumps on first impact with the floor. He lifts me over his shoulder and carries me away, finally resting me on a bench. "Don't try to lean back. You can't," he instructs me. He takes a seat beside me, which is a little comforting. I look over at him and notice, for the first time, he has a large purple lump on the side of his face. I frown and try to talk again, only to have more blood fill my mouth. I reach out, my bones screaming in pain, and touch his wound. He winces and takes my hand away. "They took me too." My eyes go wide. He nods. I shake my head, frowning. He sighs. "They thought that I knew something about Deane's runaway act. But I kept telling them, like you, that I had nothing to do with it: I didn't _know_ where he was or where he was going. But they believed me about as much as they believed you." I force myself to endure the pain and the taste of blood in order to ask him the question lingering on my mind, following this revelation. It comes out slowly and painfully.

"Why… … did… … … they l… …et yo… … ..u… off?" Biter's expression changes: I've seen this face before. He wore it when he told Deane he was caught while looking for one of the Hunger Games arenas. He wore it while he told Deane he had heard about one being nearby. He wore it when he played poker, the other night, and managed to _fool_ even the mighty poker champ, Gordy (who tried to beat him up afterward). I've seen this face before: he's lying to me. His look of surprise must mirror my own. He holds his hands up as if to protect himself from me, even though I'm not going to do anything to him.

"Look, Thatcher. I thought that it would all end better for us all if," he stammers. "If someone came forward and said they'd seen him talking to you. I thought they might treat you differently than they did." I ball my fists now, considering it more torture to hear this lame explanation for selling me out. "I didn't know _what_ to expect, Thatch!" He pleads. He's pathetic! I might have wanted to be dead a few hours ago, but now that I have him here in my power, thinking he's going to get something out of me that is in some way sympathetic toward him… now that he's confessed to what he's done to me… or at least what he's allowed them to do to me… I want to live so I can see him suffer like I suffered. He's lucky I can't speak. If I could… no, I wouldn't _have to_ speak! I'd jump on him and beat him bloody. Then I'd find a few buckets of ice cold water and splash those on him. Then I'd beat him bloody again. Then I'd electrocute him a few times. Then I would beat him senseless with a wooden baton. Then I'd… then I'd… then I'd…. I hit my thighs really hard, clenching my jaw in rage. Finally, despite Biter's attempts to calm me down, I open my mouth as wide as I can and give a really horrible, animalistic sound. It's the sort of sound I hear when a horse has broken its leg and can't get up: when the horse is in so much pain that putting it down would be merciful, _that's_ the type of sound I hear myself make.

As if in answer to my cry, the older woman – Miss Vetta – and her assistant appear from the shadows. Miss Vetta holds out a cloth and pushes Biter aside; he curls into a ball. Miss Vetta has a worried expression on her face, and she is shushing me as she places the cloth over my mouth, trying to mute my voice. I inhale something pungent and try to scream louder but within seconds, I'm unconscious again.

Light spills into the room, hitting an old tea kettle, a few boxes of meal on a Formica-topped counter mimicking tile-work. There is a heavily bolted door within my line of vision. There is the older dancing woman slumped in a wicker chair beside me. I try to move but I can't because I'm bound in some sort of wrapping from my toes to my upper chest. The dancing girl appears with a glass of something white. She jumps when she sees me awake, but the smile I remember so well from my dreams crosses her face. "You're awake!" she announces with a fair amount of cheer. The woman stirs, straightens and rubs the sleep from her eyes. There's blood on her clothing. The girl steps between us and stuffs something soft beneath my head, propping it up at a steep but not wholly uncomfortable angle. She tilts the glass of white liquid at my mouth and says, "Open, please." I open my mouth very slowly and she tilts the glass, emptying most of the liquid down my throat. It's surprisingly warm and tastes bitter and sweet at the same time. I swallow and keep my mouth closed until she tilts the glass at my lips again. I work my mouth open and let her pour the rest of the liquid into it. I swallow again and follow her with my eyes. I don't trust that I can speak at all, but as the girl moves from between me and the older woman, the latter speaks.

"I'm Miss Vetta Cordwip, boy. I've patched you up a dozen times now, most in the last forty-eight hours. I introduced myself to you before, but I don't expect you to remember me. You want to know what happened to you. You concussed when I came for you and I had nowhere else I could clean you up on account of being in the right place at the wrong time. It turns out I was there at the right time, since you seemed intent on screaming out your vocal chords. The drink Elka is giving you should repair the damage you've done to that nice voice of yours. The rest of the healing is going to take time, and we've _got_ time." She stands and leans over me. "The bad news is manageable: you might have permanent damage to your spinal cord but it doesn't look like you'll be paralyzed, so that's a bit of looking up in the midst of looking down. And the good news is very good." She smiles at me, a smile that seems to radiate wisdom and cleverness but also wiliness and a small fraction of joy. "You're not going back to the Ranches, child. You're staying here with me. I've bought your freedom… however long it might last… and I'm _never_ letting you go back there again."


	24. Chapter 22: Cor Lee

_**CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:**_

Cor Lee

I couldn't do anything else but return to my small apartment in the third _peribolus_ , which is within visual range of the Circus, the Reception Hall and the President's Mansion, and the Training Center. Although my apartment tower is only four-storeys high, each floor measures between 1 ½ - 1 ¾ floors by the average floor measurement: its ceilings soar up above its floors, though its walls give you the feeling that they're closing in on you. The building was selected to be painted a lilac purple – decidedly less outrageous than its neighbors, which are traffic cone orange and red-light district red. The third _peribolus_ is marked for its terracotta tiled roofs, and my apartment building dyed their tiles midnight blue to harmonize with the exterior color scheme. I have the corner apartment on the fourth floor… the one with the window seats cut into the interior wall, and the 3x3 balcony with French doors opening out onto it. When I step out into the morning on that balcony, I can almost see over the rim of the Circus… sorry, the _Avenue of the Tributes_. I can see the mountains very clearly from my apartment: when it's quiet down below, I can almost see this place for its natural beauty. I think that's the big trap with Panem… as much as it is a trap with the Capitol… it looks so pretty that you can't help but bow to it, never considering the poison coursing through it below the surface.

I was especially bitter this morning as I returned to the apartment and turned the key, stumbling into my small world. To my right is the sitting room with its fashionable lounging couches and a low-lying table laid out with small tumblers awaiting wine, small side plates awaiting cheese, biscotti and herbed olive oil, and long platters awaiting juicy midnight and red grapes or cherries or stuffed grape leaves. I hang an old fading print – oil on canvas – of the Fates in a garden, gender-ambiguous, sitting in a triangle formation. It used to be a favorite of my mothers'; that's why I keep it. To my left is a lover's arch carved out of the wall, leading into my very small dining room: a simple two-person table with a glass top and two empty chairs awaiting service. I have less than one length of counter, most of which plays proprietor to an electric tea kettle, a two-pot hot plate and a single-cup French press. There is a small dishwasher also, and a ¾ size refrigerator. It's an appliance big enough for a small wheel of cheese, a thin bottle of wine (or two half bottles), a half-pint of gelato, a jar of milk and one vine-tomato, one small package of grapes and two sticks of butter (should I have any). Against the wall beside my French doors is a three-shelf rack for my dishes, each with a basket on the edge for knives, forks or spoons (depends on the shelf's contents). On the opposite side of the French doors is my personal cutting table with a drawer containing my cutting knives. Above it, on the wall, is an angled shelf for bread. Directly in front of me is a small corridor that ends with my bedroom, which I won't describe except to say that it's best and cleanest features are the before-mentioned window seats. Just short of my room, to the right, there is a small room with a specialty door (latched, because I said so) that leads into the other crowning glory of my tiny apartment: the Prayer-Space. It is tiny, but big enough for a small bedside table-sized altar upon which is a triptych of the Fates and a small carved jewelry box containing my counting beads. There are no chairs in the Prayer-Space; there is a kneeling cushion at the foot of the altar. There are no electric lights either; on the wall at the entrance, in a wall-sconce, there are three thick candles: one is pink, one is white and one is purple – the Maiden (white), the Mother (pink) and the Wisdom Woman (purple). Directly behind me, down a one-stride-length corridor and to the right (my left as long as I'm standing here) is the washroom. At the dead end of the corridor is the towel closet (two shelves; big towels on the bottom, hand and face towels atop). This is the entirety of my small world, and I can't enter it willingly, not after the magic of last night.

It isn't until I've peeled off my clothes and tossed them to the washroom floor, and then stood, utterly naked, looking at myself in the full length mirror behind the washroom door – while running a warm bath – that I begin to think about something other than Atoka Menzies. I don't mean this literally but her marks are all over me. Everywhere she touched me is sacred, even though most guys would like to tell me that it's just sex. Putting it that way, how can any part of it be sacred? I think I understand when my mothers said that it is a natural instinct until it is practiced with someone entirely special. "Then, Ancora, it's not in any way ordinary. You'll see." I do: Atoka is everywhere on me.

The Fates are gender-ambiguous because they have no gender. As much as I assign a Maiden, Mother and Wisdom Woman personality to them each, they are also the Youth, the Patron and the Wily Man. I suppose they're Innocence, Discovery and Experience also, if you want to take a broader look at it. Whatever angle you're looking from, the Fates always come in three, just as fortune comes in threes. My fortune has thus far been misfortune, opportunity, more misfortune. Will I ever have fortune smile upon me? I wonder this because, as I look at myself in the washroom mirror, what I see is a boy who made promises he couldn't keep. _Don't make promises you can't keep,_ Atoka said to me. I didn't understand her then, but I think I'm beginning to see her side now. The Fates are gender-ambiguous, probably because they engage all walks of life: man, woman and non-human.

I step into the bath and sink down. As I'm laying my head back on the tub, my doorbell is rung. I leave it, hoping my decision to ignore the caller will encourage them to go away; of course, it doesn't. The visitor knocks soon after the bell. Before I can ignore it, the bell is rung a third time. "Mr. Lee?" A man's voice calls in the accented Capitol fashion. (I know I grew up with it around me but I still think it sounds unnatural, put on). I can tell he's not going away, so I get up and find a towel to cover my lower body before striding to the door and opening it with as much force as I can; he needs to see that he's clearly intruding. Instead, he examines me with the sort of look on his face that makes me very uncomfortable. I think I've seen him before: he has a round face, big eyes and a wider-than-ordinary mouth. He wears a white dress shirt beneath a rich green blazer and sports a green bowtie. He looks at me the way that Atoka looked at me the first night she and I spent in each other's company, when she asked me to turn around so she could get a look at me. That's how this man is looking at me. He feels dangerous.

"What?" I demand, leaning against the doorframe.

"Oooo, temper," he says in a teasing voice that only makes me more annoyed. "Can I come in, or is this a bad time?" He waits a second before pushing past me and stepping into the apartment. I close the door behind me and return to the washroom, almost able to close the door on him before he sticks his foot out. With the smallest bit of leverage, this intruder manages to nudge his way into the washroom. Exasperated, I drop my towel and stand in front of him, hands on hips. He almost smiles.

"What?" I demand again. He finishes staring at me (all of me) and grins into my face.

"Don't let me interrupt your bathing," he indicates the filled tub.

"Shockingly," I say with bite, "you're too late."

"I always like a good bath," he says cheerfully, sitting down on the lid of my toilet, which is too close to me for my liking. "Well, go on," he gestures to the tub. "You've got a lot of washing to do." I get into the tub and sink low. "Good. Well, my name is Anura Bufo. I am a sponsor in the Hunger Games, and I came here because I learned from a mutual contact that you have been interested in the District 10 Tributes." He shook his head slowly, looking upset. "It's so terrible to know that two perfectly innocent children had to die, and both on the same day! And a brother and sister, no less!" I want to punch him. "Well, I share your disappointment because, you see, I was _also_ sponsoring them. I even saved the girl once in the early going… _not_ that she was in danger then, of course, hiding as she was and a good thing too. But the boy was rather a disappointment to me. I thought he'd make it farther than he did. Oh well, I guess the Games are unpredictable." He shrugs, nonchalantly. "I also came because I heard from a few witnesses that you had gotten yourself _very close_ to the District 10 mentor, Miss Atoka Menzies. Is that true?"

"What's it to you?" I snap.

"Oh nothing except that, well, she seems to have eluded me. We were off to a great start, you know; she invited me up to her suite on the Opening Day night, although I did, of course, promise to keep her Tributes alive. She rather owed me one, so I took the chance the Fates gave me and spent the night with her." He looks at me, expecting something.

"Why do I care?" I spit at him, doing a poor job concealing my distaste for the man.

"I don't know," he says. " _Should_ you care? I mean, _after all_ , she's _just_ a mentor from the Lower Districts." He chuckles. "Her value is not great."

"Why are you here, Mr. Bufo?" I ask.

"Well, you see, I don't really know. I think it is because I felt compelled to speak with the last man to see her, and by all accounts," he smirks, "that was _definitely_ you." I'm sure I'm blushing because he continues to laugh in a conceited way. "You didn't _honestly_ think that there are any places in the Capitol that _aren't_ monitored, did you? Even the empty Theater Tiverus?" I think he's being coquettish by hiding his chuckle behind his hand. It's all very patronizing. "Besides," he says finally. "With a bent story like yours, I'd be impressed if there wasn't a locator on you personally." My blood runs cold. "You know, your little chat with Mr. Pavarol was a nice indicator that you still know how to tell a good story. But," he sighs dramatically. "In the end, the truth _always_ comes to the surface." I watch him closely as he reacts to the silence that falls between us. He isn't like others who can't stand silence and stillness: he seems to expand and blossom in the void. I disliked him from the moment he rang my doorbell, but my feelings have changed since then: I _fear_ him. Okay, not _him_ exactly, but definitely something _about_ him. He's like a predator lying in wait for his prey: patient, quiet, watchful, observant. I think of all these things while he stares back at me, unassuming in his gaze, a half-smile playing at his mouth. "Isn't this all so _melodramatic_?" he says at last.

"I don't follow," I say quietly.

" _This_. Everything the Capitol has: isn't it all so _melodramatic_?" He looks away from me, lacing his fingers and dropping them into his lap. "If I may, I _do_ like your sense of style. May I ask you about the painting in your receiving room?"

" _Sitting_ room," I correct him. "And I suppose you will anyway."

"Yes," he says. "Why the Fates? Why not another less macabre style?"

"Macabre?" I challenge him. "What do you mean by macabre?"

"I mean that the Fates are always concerned with death, and they're more or less tied to it. Why choose symbols of death in such a well fashioned domicile?"

"You're mistaking the Fates," I say. "They're about life."

"Oh, really?" He raises his eyebrows. "Say more."

"No," I reply. "You want me to tell you something personal. I'm not going to because it's none of your business about my life. And I think your welcome is on the verge of being overstayed." He smirks.

"As you wish, Mr. Lee." He gets up and pauses a moment to look at me. "I meant it when I said I'm sorry for your losses. I was beginning to believe that District 10 might have another female Victor. Isn't it odd whose lives are affected by poor decisions we make outside the arena?" My blood runs cold again.

"What?"

"I mean, _really_ when the Hunger Games are played, who _isn't_ a part of them?" He blinks a few times while I try to decide if that was an answerable or rhetorical question. "I'll see myself out." He leaves.

I stare at the painting of the Fates as I drip dry with a towel around my waist. What does he see in this painting that makes out the Fates to be about death? What do I see in it that makes them about life? For one, the progression from inexperienced to wise is a strong indicator that the Fates are about life, for me. For another, the sinister/mysterious nature of the Wisdom Woman/Experience/Wily Man could seem macabre to a simple mind; but Anura Bufo _isn't_ a simple mind. He's precisely the opposite. What did he mean that I'm being watched? I rack my memory for answers and a few particular thoughts arise.

The fire was a mystery until conclusive evidence showed that it was purely an accident, that it was _just_ poor wiring. Who was the worker who wired the building? I can see his face in my mind's eye, but I can't recall a name, so I pass by the avenue.

The circumstances surrounding Marton's job transfer from our family are also mysterious, but I think that's because I don't remember them very clearly. He was with us through the fire, and he was very devoted to staying on with us through the transition. After that, there's a large chunk of my memory missing because the next I remember, he's adamantly refusing to continue working for my moms. I remember him leaving, very clearly, because there is an equally perplexing sense of _joy_ in watching him go, but from where that comes is invisible to my hindsight.

Growing into a young man is a passage in my book of life that I'd prefer to forget, but each page seems to be vivid in my memory. I apprenticed for a bookseller; he taught me how to repair torn book-binding and the meticulous craft of calligraphy; he took me into his care and provided for me a room above the shop (which is typical of apprenticeships except that masters tend to give dingy little rooms that are often cold in the winter, and yet my master gave me a spare room, complete with a small fireplace) and encouraged me to collect rare books; one day, he found a book of old prints from a place called Firenze, and among them was the print of the Fates I grew up with, which stunned me. "The original _was_ in a museum, but it has been missing for many years now," I remember him telling me. "Probably stolen and then lost in the end-of-times." I remember him giving me the task of appraising a heavy crate shipment of old books that opened from the left and were constructed on thin paper in a script that ran from the right to the left and was wholly unrecognizable to me. Despite all that, it was beautiful. Another book in that shipment contained a list of symbols in different forms, one of which was the very form of the calligraphy in _that_ first book; and as I dug into both tomes, I remember beginning to discover an understanding of the writing that I'd never known before. "Wisdom from the old ages," my master had said, but what age and what wisdom he left for me to decrypt. Finally, on an off day, I stumbled on a series of symbols that I remembered from a distant past. I could only recall them appearing on the side of our old house. I took leave of my master and returned to the _peribolus_ of my childhood, only to find that the house had been knocked down (or had fallen down… either is completely likely). In the rubble, I found fragments of the symbols I was looking for – fortuitously, since I spent most of the day digging with severely waning hope – and collected them, bringing them back to my spare room.

I shake my head clear of those memories, simply because I have a growing sense of fear about retracing those steps. Plainly put, soon after that day, strange things started to happen: government officials seemed to follow me on the streets; merchants tended to avoid me; I was even visited by the President, briefly. I got scared and tried to dispose of the books and the fragments, and after that it felt like things went back to normal. Then, my apprenticeship ended when I woke up one morning and found my master had died in his sleep. I took on his business, doing well, until one day about two years ago, I received a parcel containing the books and the fragments _sans_ one piece. Someone had tried to piece the wall back together, and in so doing, they'd created a very eerie spider-like wheel, in the shape of a square with four arms spiraling from the center point. The top and bottom arms formed a vertical line through the center point, but at the top the line broke and forked to the right and at the bottom it broke and forked to the left. Likewise, the right and left sides formed a horizontal line through the center point, but on the right side the line broke and forked downward, almost like an arm. The left side did the same, except that the missing fragment was the forked arm: it cut off at its elbow, which was indicating an upward curve. It looked something like this: I hid the pieces, not wanting to be connected to them. Now, as I remember all this, I know where to look if I wanted to find that symbol again. I look around me, though, remembering what Mr. Bufo said: _You didn't_ honestly _think that there are any places in the Capitol that_ aren't _monitored, did you?... Besides, with a bent story like yours, I'd be impressed if there wasn't a locator on you personally._ I choose wisely.

Tamora leans against the table as I return to the Viewing Room: she's smiling. She's so ugly when she smiles.

"Had a good evening, did we?" she jeers. "I saw your little birdie off this morning. Had to send her back to 10. No reason for her to be here anymore, is there?" I glare at her.

"Why did you do that," I ask forcefully. Tamora shrugs, still smiling.

"Dude, this is the Games. You win or you die. Most die. It's just a pair of starving murderous kids killing each other. A few less of them in this country isn't worth crying over." I lose it and knock her down with my punch. I have muscle memory of that jarring connection, my fist to someone's skull. It seems to creep up on me out of the shadows of that part of my memory I have imprisoned in darkness. It seems that the doors of that Hell are swinging open now as I find myself satisfied with pursuing another punch, breaking her nose and watching the blood flow free. A smile dawns on my face now, even as I'm pulled off her and away, into the custody of the _benevolent_ Capitol Peacekeepers.


	25. Chapter 23: Winter

_**Part Three**_

 _ **CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:**_

Winter

 _Atoka Menzies_

In the two months that have passed since I got off that train and appeared on the platform at District 10, things have been very unusual. I was greeted by the solemn faces of the McKay family, dismayed to find that they appeared with large bruises on their bodies. I wasn't bound to learn more about the history of the bruises though, not as I _was_ bound to learn more about my own District and how it had changed since I had left it less than two weeks previous. For the time being, I was faced with the McKays and my own failure to bring back their children. Mrs. McKay shook her head when I tried to offer my condolences and apologize for getting her children killed.

"Even Seeder put up a good fight," she assures me. "But they weren't expecting to come back, and we were all prepared for it." Even so, when I look at the faces of their surviving children, I can see the deeply set despair in their eyes; even the youngest McKay, a sweet little girl called Laurel (with whom I'd become much better acquainted in the coming months) who shouldn't know much about the world and life, even in Laurel McKay's eyes I can spot a withering of hope. I invite them to come back to my house in the Victor's Village, but when we get closer to the Ranches, the children become very visibly distraught and eventually they thank me but turn away and head back into the Town. When _I_ enter the Ranches, a strange feeling grips me; usually these grandiose houses and their properties – separated from the public by handsome but showy wooden fences – have a touch-me-not effect on visitors, but on this occasion, that effect is heightened by something beyond my vision that causes me to be hushed as I pass them by, like walking on egg-shells. It's like tip-toeing past a sleeping dragon, as the idiom says. Arriving at my own house feels like the end of a very long journey.

In the evening, I'm expected to be entertained at Mr. G. W. Burliss's ranch home. It's a tradition to celebrate the return of the District's only Victor, and usually I manage the evening with grace. The tradition gives the cowboys and their cow-men a chance to do something special and honor the culture of District 10, and part of that culture is to show off as a means for attracting me to a particular suitor. I play along but never choose anyone in the end; a relationship with a cowboy would be too tedious for me, not to mention the courting etiquette that I'd be in charge of observing. In the past, I've seen this gathering as the last phase of the Hunger Games (in other words, something I _have_ to get through), and in order to _truly_ win the Games, I'll have to avoid becoming someone's belle. As the usual entourage of eligible male cowboys comes by to escort me to the Burliss Ranch, I realize that I'm not playing the Games the same way I used to play them: before I had nothing to lose, and now I have Cor. How he touched me will never be matched by the District 10 male cowboys; how he kissed me will never be how the buckaroos kiss me; how he felt against me will never be how they feel on my skin: I never had anything before that last night in the Capitol, and now I have _something_. Having Cor scares me to death; I don't _know_ how to play _these_ Games.

Mr. Gordon Walkerson Burliss isn't the sort of man you'd look at and want to befriend – not that anyone in 10 has the luxury of _choosing_ their friends. He's squat, looks on the edge of unkempt, has a hungry look in his eyes and when he speaks, it's like he's barking at you. His facts are staggering: he owns close to sixty ranch hands – whom he rooms in two large longhouses at the edge of his property, near the Gaming Reserve – and close to twenty-five buckaroos – thirteen male, twelve female; his property dwarfs that of his neighbors by 320 acres – his neighbors are Mrs. Cheneye Dickson and Mr. Constantine Powell-Cullen, and they own a combined 1,090 acres worked by a combined forty-eight ranch hands and supporting a combined nineteen buckaroos (seven female cowboys); he owns and operates two dairy barns, two livestock barns purposed for meat, a grounds for thoroughbred horses and two small processing facilities – "One's for milk, cheese, eggs, cheese curds for the kids; the other's for butchery and meat packaging for the Capitol folk. We give the hinds to the Townies and save the spares for our Victor." – and he owns a coop for the chickens, hens and roosters, but it is so close to the Gaming Reserve that a few escapees have become wild and roam the Reserve with other wild animals. Mr. G. W. Burliss has no issue repeating these facts to me over a whiskey on these _special_ occasions when I'm invited to dine and be entertained. I've always thought that if I were a ranch hand working for Mr. G. W. Burliss, I'd hate myself for all the work I'd have to do. "Of course the up-side is that there's no threat of going into the Hunger Games and getting killed," Mrs. Dickson likes to remind me when I find time to have a more _civil_ conversation with her. She's the most agreeable cow-man at the Ranches, I think, though I've seen her be tougher than rusty nails. I can identify with her hard-knock style: it's the sign of a survivor, and only the Fates know what has made her that way.

I only know him as Jesse: he's the buckaroo who brings me flowers when it's time to be escorted to the Burliss Ranch and ruthlessly be flirted with. What isn't remarkable about Jesse is that he has weathered skin, short cropped hair, wears a cowboy hat, blue jeans, a large belt and a shirt buttoned down the front; what _is_ remarkable about Jesse is that he speaks slowly and softly, he's quick to smile at me, and he is a genuine gentleman. He rings my bell, always tips his hat at me when he sees me open the door – "Well, hi there Ms. Menzies. You're looking really handsome today, better than the last time I had the honor of seeing you. I brought you these flowers because I know you said they're your favorite, but you'd better get them in some water in a hurry: it's a real dry one out there today." – and when I let him in, he always wipes his boots off on the doormat and asks if he ought to take them off. I suppose I enjoy his company in all these simple moments, and if I _had_ to marry someone from 10, I'd choose him, but that was before Cor. I smile at Jesse sadly, now, knowing something has happened to close this door I've opened between us.

"Come on in then, and let's get these lovely flowers into a vase," I leave the door open for him because I know he'll close it behind him, and I make my way to the kitchen, arriving just as he calls out, "Ms. Menzies, would you prefer me to take my boots off?" And I call back to him, "Oh, Jesse, you ask me every time and every time I say you're okay. Besides, I need to have something to do, so might as well be cleaning." Jesse strides into the kitchen as I'm dropping the flowers into my red clay pottery vase from the healer, Miss Cordwip, in the Town.

"So, will you do me the honor of escorting you to Mr. Burliss's tonight?" he asks, on cue. I offer him the same sad smile in response.

"Jesse, I'd rather go with you than anybody else," I say, only this time I don't mean it because when he blushes, I feel guilty for toying with him. "You look stronger," I say, changing the subject.

"Shucks, thank you, ma'am," he says. "I've been on with the bulls lately. I'm determined to put my roping lessons to use."

"And are you?" I ask.

"Well, mostly I've been practicing but not on the bulls. Them I've been wrestling with 'cause they don't stand still like a barn post does." We both laugh at him. "Ms. Menzies," he begins again, slower and a little hesitant. "Have you put more thought to getting married? I don't mean to be rude or anything, I'm just curious." He gets another sad smile and I see some of his hope fade in his chocolate brown eyes. Nonetheless, he keeps the smile on his face. "Aw, that's okay, honest." He scratches the back of his neck. "I just asked because I know the other guys are going to come and ask you like they always do." I find my way over to Jesse – sweet Jesse – and take one of his rough hands in my own.

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Jesse boy. I'd be lucky to have a sweetheart like you. But my life is complex right now, so if you're still interested, ask me again next year." He always nods and that ends the conversation right there.

I'm definitely thinking about Jesse now, as the first snowflakes fall out of the wintry white sky above. I'm sitting beside the fire in my fireplace, warming myself from the bitter cold stillness of District 10 beyond my walls. It's a job to be done on the inside as well as the outside: ten minutes ago, before I began this conversation with myself, I had a call on my phone. It was from the Capitol. It was from President Coriolanus Snow – _a propos_. It wasn't a long conversation, nor was it a two-way conversation. He congratulated me and invited me to come back to the Capitol on his bill. He'd send a train to District 10 in the morning. He wanted to see how far along I was in my pregnancy, and, he wanted to discuss the fatherhood of the child. I'm sitting by my fire, thinking about Jesse and Cor and President Snow, rubbing my slowly changing womb, shivering.

 _Deane Scythe and Moxie Tyler_

"Get over here to this fire, Mox."

"It's dangerous to be lighting a fire, Deane, how many times do I have to say it."

"Only once more so you can shut up about it."

"Always a comeback."

"First snowfall of the year."

"The Wild Folk'll be moving out soon. Got to follow the herds."

"The wild turkeys are coming back onto the Reserve. They made you sick the other night, didn't they?"

"We have to eat. I didn't find anything more than snakes in the canyon. But it might be warmer there, if we want to move camp."

"Naw. I like this cave here. It echoes some, I know that, but now that it's winter, who's going to be out here close enough to hear us?"

"Desperate animals."

"What if we tried going back to the Compound?"

"Really? You want to have _this_ conversation _again_?"

"Come on Deane. We can't support ourselves out here on what we've got. Things might have calmed down in the Compound."

"Yeah? And what about feeding your sisters and brothers? Hmmm? We're wanted fugitives now, whether it's officially in writing or not it's as good as the truth. We're wanted now, and that means there's a price on our heads that is probably big enough to help anyone, Prairie Dog or Townie, in the winter to come. We can't just go back there and expect to be welcomed without mischief."

"We can't stay here, Deane. We just can't."

"I'll figure something out."

"Yeah, _you_ will, all by _yourself_. B.S. Try again."

"Fine! _We'll_ figure something out. Happy?"

" _Ecstatic_."

"Hey, so last night, I know you get cold, but you don't have to hang onto me so tight, okay?"

"Uhh, _you_ were hanging onto me, mister. And you _usually_ do as soon as I lay on my side, you just shimmy on up behind me and put your stinking arms around me."

"Oh yeah? Why don't you throw me off?"

"Because I'm _asleep_ , dumbo!"

"Oh _yeah_? Well how do you know that's what I do?"

"Because I can feel you against me! Duh! Hey, _catch the meat before it falls!_ "

" _Shit!_ Burned my finger."

"Give it to me! I'll fix it."

"Ouch! Stop rubbing it and making it worse!"

"I'm making it better, Mr. Scythe! Miss Vetta showed me how."

"You keep _talking_ about this Miss Vetta. 'Miss Vetta showed me this, Miss Vetta showed me that.' _Who_ is this _Miss Vetta_ anyway?"

"Shut up, will you! I _don't_ sound like that anyway. And Miss Vetta's a healer and child-birther."

"A _Prairie Dog_?"

"No, a Townie." … "Actually, I think she's from _outside_ , but I don't know for sure. I just think it. How's that now? Bend your finger, tell me if it hurts."

"Ahh, it's better, but…"

"But it hurts?"

"Just where you spit on it."

"Oh. It's fine then. It probably just stings, right?"

"Probably, _just_." … "Oh, now it's nice." … "How can someone be a Townie _and_ be from _outside_?"

"I _told_ you, it's _just_ something I _thought_."

"What _else_ do you think?"

"Shut up and eat your food."

"Wanna cuddle?"

"Shut up, Deane."

"No, seriously! It's really cold."

"Shut _up_ , Deane."

"Fine. Just saying, I have more fat on me than you do. Cuddling would make us both warmer."

"Shut _up_ , Deane."

"Good _night_ , Moxie Tyler."

"Goodnight, Deane Scythe."

 _Moxie Tyler_

I dreamed. I stood beside the Old Fifty Yards Tree and watched the Ranches burning. I could hear screams of fear and anguish, but I couldn't move toward them. I scanned the horizon as I heard a bone-chilling war cry, and I could see a flock of Wild Folk galloping toward District 10's most western town. I don't know how I knew that. My hands were weathered and calloused, and I remember naming each callous: Sparrowkin, Ehawee, Mika, Winona, Mina, Weayaya, Mato, Napayshni, Skinner. I shaded my eyes to see the war party riding toward me, even though I knew that they were not after me. The ground trembled, the cry rose up louder. Men with red skin and men with tanned skin rode together, and somehow my heart jumped with joy and a mix of fear. And I saw my husband – an appalling idea since there were no models for husbands and wives in my native recollection – with a wild turkey's feather in his hair, riding alongside my father and a small band of red-skinned men. He carried a hatchet in one hand, the reins of his horse in another. His eyes met mine as he passed by, and I offered the Fates and the Wakan Tanka a prayer for his glorious result in battle, even if it meant death. I felt someone approach me from behind, and I swung around and muffled a surprised cry to find the weathered and embittered face of District 10's only Victor looking into mine. "It's time," I heard myself say.

"Time for what?" Deane asked me, sleepily, shaking me out of the dream. I rubbed my eyes, shivered and tried pulling the threadbare blanket we shared over my shoulders. Deane helped me accomplish this task, and then he turned to the small fire he'd built in the back of our cave. I watched him with cautious, untrusting eyes, searching for both the feather in his hair and the hatchet in his hand. Neither materialized as the dim light of morning attempted to illuminate the world around us. Clouds covered the small patches of sky I could see from my sitting place, and I realized that some of the snow that had fallen the night before was now covering the canyon. "Time for what?" Deane asked again and I got up, stumbling a little as my weary body worked through some minor aches – I was becoming used to the hard ground as my bed, but that didn't make it more comfortable – and found my way to Deane's fire. I took his injured hand in my own and inspected the burn. It was rosy but not bad after the salve had been applied to it: I even believed he was actually healing from my poor healing work.

"Nothing," I said. "It was just a dream."

"Tell me," he said, taking his hand back after giving mine a friendly squeeze.

"There was a war party coming to the Ranches to raid them, I thought. It was both Wild Folk and men from 10; no one else can be sunburned quite like District 10's folk."

"Except for the visitors from the Capitol," Deane offered. I took it for sarcasm and smirked. "No, seriously," he protested. "Whenever they'd come to the Ranches, I mean it was like they'd never been in the sun before! Five minutes and they were redder than a first born babe out in the sun for the first time."

"How often did you get Capitol folk visiting?"

"Only when something important happened. And every time Miss Atoka came back from the Capitol, we had a large welcoming party for her. The cowboys would put on their best," he smirks, looking away in remembrance. "They all thought they had a chance to win her hand in marriage… you know, to become her husband… and they would talk each other up and down in the yard and even in the longhouses we stayed in, sometimes."

"But she's not married," I say.

"No. She never really took to any of them. Mrs. Dickson has a cowboy called Jesse and he seems to be closest to Miss Atoka, but she's never said yes to him." I think about that for a little while before asking my own question.

"Do you ever think about getting married?" Deane gives me a strange look, but he's not unkind.

"I'm not really old enough, I think, for marrying. It's never been much of an option anyway. And I never really had parents so I don't know how to be a husband to a wife. It's just been Thatch and me looking out for each other."

"Well, _I'm_ looking out for you now," I say, surprising us both. "And you look out for me too."

"Yeah," he looks at his feet, nervously raising his hands to warm them by the fire. "Yeah, it's kind of nice, for a change." He stutters. "I mean, I used to despise you… for… you know… the _hens_."

"I didn't care much for you either!" I laugh nervously. "You were telling Bess and me that you were going to get us killed in the Games!"

"I've come around though," he says, his voice drifting off.

"Yeah," I answer in kind. "You have." We sit in silence, carefully avoiding the other's gaze.

 _Atoka Menzies_

The feast was grandiose, I remember beside my fire in the falling dark. Mr. Burliss was his usual self for the first hour, boisterous and living into his role as host. But when Mrs. Cheneye Dickson found her way over to me during the bull-riding showcase, I noticed Mr. Burliss becoming wary of every movement around him. "He looks nervous about something," she whispered into my ear. "He's never nervous about bull-riding."

"Oh, I hadn't noticed until now," I replied. "He's been up to his usual antics."

"Yes," Mrs. Dickson said, carefully. "And no. I wonder," she faced me directly, and I turned to face her as well. "There's been a rumor mill turning around. Some of the cowgirls think he _might_ make a proposal to you himself. He's never done it before, no, and why should he?"

"I have no idea," I said.

"Neither do I," she said. "Which is why we're all so curious about it." The cowboy riding the bull got thrown off at that moment, and a ranch hand had to jump out and steady the bull as he snorted and turned toward the rider he'd thrown. I remembered one feast where a cowboy had been gored by a bull. I'd had a bad time of it after that… you know, with all my unaddressed trauma from the Hunger Games. "Did Jesse bring you this evening?" She asked with a tone of one prying for answers to questions not asked directly. I knew her game and I nodded. "He's also interested."

"Yes," I said. "He asked me."

"You said no," she states.

"Correct. I told him to ask me again next year."

"That's fair," she replied. "Do you think you'll have changed your mind next year?"

"Definitely," I said, trying to ensure her that Jesse had a chance. Realistically, I was stalling in hopes that there'd be another offer coming for me from afar, even though I could guess that such an offer would never come. I was still, in the end, a girl from the Lower Districts, and to be considered a wife of a Capitol man … even for a Hunger Games Victor … was a fairy tale without much weight. _But_ if Cor _did_ ask… I'd say yes.

"You know you'd break his heart if you said no again," Mrs. Dickson said, cutting through my thoughts. "Atoka."

I check the clock on the mantel and decide it's too late to make any calls to the Ranches. I'd be glad to have a little company on this stormy night. I reconsider my choice about five times, and finally I push myself up off the floor and go to the telephone to make the call. It's a remarkable thing to hear Jesse on the other end, after I've summoned him from his lodging by way of a reticent ranch hand.

"Well hi there Ms. Menzies. I'm glad to have a phone call from you, but," he pauses. "Well, you don't really sound yourself, Ms. Menzies. Are you alright?"

"Oh Jesse," I begin to cry, shocked at how comforting his voice is to me.

"Okay, you hold tight. I'm coming over." Before I can say anything, he cuts the line on his end, leaving me with a cruel buzz in my ear. I clutch the phone and continue to cry, feeling very small and broken down. That's how he finds me when I don't answer the door. He lets himself in and calls out a few times before finding me, crumpled in a ball on the floor, the phone still in my hand and at my ear. "Ms. Menzies…" he says, shocked at the sight of me. "What have they done to you?" Before I can answer, he's crossed the room (in his boots still, which makes me laugh later), picked me up in his arms and brought me back to the couch where he holds me tight. I smell him… the real Jesse… for the first time, and it's a comforting smell. He's not yet washed the sweat off his body, but he's taken time enough to mask it with some cologne. It's not an overpowering splash of scent, but just enough – economically applied – so that he doesn't smell like body odor. I let him comfort me, which is another way of saying that, for the first time since I've begun to get morning sickness and have needed Cor to be there for me, I feel like someone is in my corner enough to let myself go in his arms.

Jesse gets me to sit down, but I won't allow him to let go of me, so I end up partially on his lap. His heart is racing; I can hear the quick thump-thumps. They center me as I count them, and as I slow in my crying fit, his heartbeats slow in unison. Finally, I manage to sniffle and break away from him. He looks so pathetic as I look into his face, and in the absence of conversation, I notice he's still wearing his boots. "You forgot to ask about your boots," I laugh, sniffle and say at the same time. His smile lights up the room, accompanied with the prerequisite blush, and he scratches the back of his neck, chuckling nervously.

"Yeah, I guess I did," he says. "Shucks. Well would you like me to take them off now, Ms. Menzies?" I laugh, feeling more grounded by his return to familiar formality.

"Oh Jesse," I begin to say, but I stop myself. The way he's looking at me, hanging on my words… _no_ , on my _desire_ … it changes me deeply. "Jesse," I repeat, but again I go no further, and he doesn't seem to care.

"You got my shoulder good and soaked," he chuckles.

"Sorry," I say in a tone more like his than mine.

"Naw, you don't have to explain yourself to me, Ms. Menzies," he says softly, echoing my well-rehearsed reply back to me.

"It's late. I called you out of bed. I shouldn't have…."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me," he repeats, but this time he takes ownership of the phrase in a way that surprises me. I always thought he was more of a cowboy who did what he was told and didn't bother thinking too much about anything else except _what he was told_ to do. But with this new tone I hear him use, it's as if he's assured me that he can think for himself. I wasn't expecting it. "Anyway, I was getting badly beat by a few cowboys in cards, so you _actually_ bailed me out." He smiles, dryly.

"That makes two of us then," I say back. "You bailed me out."

"Can I ask why?" He treads cautiously.

"Yes," I say feeling certain but sounding hesitant. "I'm not positive, really, myself. Its sort of a lot of things."

"What's the _easiest_ thing you can say?" He asks me.

"Well, I'm pregnant," I blurt out before I can catch my own words. He makes a face I find hard to describe until he responds.

"Well… I said _easiest_ but I guess that works too." I laugh, relieved that he's taken that news with a bit of tension-relieving wit. "I don't know anything about childbearing," he says shyly. "But I'm a fast learner."

"Well, that makes one of us," I say back, matching wit with wit.

"Shucks," he says, scratching the back of his neck again. "Was it something you agreed to… or…?" he asks, hesitantly.

"Yes," I say. "I agreed to it."

"In the Capitol?"

"It had to be. I've never had relations with anyone here." He blushes deeply and looks away. "I'm sorry," I laugh nervously. "This is not the conversation I was thinking about with you."

"It's alright Ms. Menzies," he says. "I've birthed foals before… but the first time I did that, I think I fainted." We both laugh. "D'you mind not mentioning that to any of the cowboys?" I nod. "Mrs. Dickson knows, of course; she was there. I did fine until I thought about it, and that's when I got to thinking about how many ways I could have gone wrong and killed the foal or its mother or both, and _that's_ how I got myself into trouble and fainted."

"I think it might be easier with women," I say, hoping to reassure him. He still seems nervous. "Do you mind not telling anyone else about it?" I say. He grins and nods. "We can make it our secret."

"Our secret," he says. "You know, I can help you with this. I'm gentle. But you already know that. I can bring you things, you know, for extra. Folks in Town might know more than we do, but if I'm asking for a 'whoopsie'… that's what we call them when the cowgirls get a belly-full… no one will have suspicions."

"Hey," I say, interrupting him in the beginning of his planning stage. "The President has invited me to the Capitol to have a chat about it." He seems to understand what that means. I'm beginning to think that we're not from such different worlds after all. "So I'm going to have to go. I can maybe ask for someone to escort me."

"You don't have to ask, Ms. Menzies," he says quickly. "I'm your man. Never had a function I _didn't_ escort you to and from. No one will suspect if it's me who goes with you." I smile at him.

"Truly?"

"Truly."

I am looking at Jesse through different eyes. "Oh Jesse," I say finally. "I think we're in for a really great friendship." I watch as he lets a smile silence the words he wished to say, and for the first time ever – with Jesse – I'm madly curious to know what they were.

 _Deane Scythe_

"The trouble is that I don't know how to make any sort of weapons," I'm saying to Moxie as we both look at the small pile of stones she thought up collecting to fashion into knives or something sharp. "We got all our tools from the cow-men. I told you that already."

"You did," she says sharply. "Which is why _I_ suggested going and raiding the Ranches. _We_ are certainly able to get tools for killing animals from there…."

"But I _also_ told you that if I go back, they'll catch me." She mustn't understand what the cow-men and their lackey cowboys are capable of if she's being so insistent upon this raiding plan.

"They're _not_ going to catch you, Deane! We're going to cause a distraction. The Prairie Dogs will help us. They like me. And anyway, the Peacekeepers are gone from the Compound as of yesterday. So who's going to catch you? You've been gone so long, how do you know they don't think you're already dead?"

"I _never_ assume I know what they're thinking," I caution her. " _You_ shouldn't assume either. I swear they _know_ things."

"Well, then we're going to have to learn how to turn these rocks into weapons." _And we're back on square one._

"What is your plan, then?" I say, huffing and crossing my arms.

"Go to the Compound, recruit some kids to help us…."

" _Wait a minute_ … haven't you all got tools in the Compound?"

"You don't _steal_ from the _poor_ , dummy! You steal from the _rich_."

"So we recruit some kids, then what?"

"And then we send them onto the Gaming Reserve, looking for ranch hands to distract and stealing whatever they can. And _then_ …"

"Wait," I stop her again. She doesn't like it and crosses her arms. "How can we trust that they won't just steal game animals and go right back to the Compound?"

"It's _winter_ , Deane. They'll leave tracks in the snow. Not to mention the tracks that the ranch hands will leave. It's going to be fine. Prairie Dogs do what we need to survive. Trust _me_."

"I trust you, Moxie… just not _them_."

"Fine! Figure out how to make weapons out of these rocks. _I'll_ go to the Compound and do it myself. Then we'll see who's right." She storms out of the cave and I'm inclined to follow her and make her stop, but I'm not really happy with her suggestion anyway, so I sit down and stare at the rocks, hoping they'll offer some answers. I can still hear her stomping around in the snow and as long as I can hear her, I'm reminded to stick to my guns. But there comes a moment when I _can't_ hear her anymore. I step out of the cave cautiously and look down. She's left footprints in the snow, but it's so cold out that the prints have become ice, and the grooves and contours of the land make it difficult to see her prints clearly. I begin tracking her anyway, a feeling of dread overcoming me. Several yards out of the canyon, her tracks begin to blend with other footprints. At first there are a few – one or two – but as I get closer to that big old tree, a _few_ becomes about twelve. I can't track Moxie's prints anymore and that feeling of dread grows. That's when I look up and see what I had been dreading: the Compound – still more than fifty yards out, is deathly still and silent. It is the middle of the day, and yet, there is _no_ activity there whatever. I spin around as I hear the ground break underfoot and before I can positively identify the bearded man who's approached me, he's knocked me out. As I go down, I hear the laughs of a handful of men, and one somewhat distinct voice says, "That's them both. Sling him over…" and I'm out.

 _Atoka Menzies_

The day has come. Jesse meets me at the door. I'm wrapped up to conceal what is a slowly developing belly. He's right that no one suspects us as we walk from the Victor's Village through the Ranches and out to the train station behind the town hall. Ever since returning to District 10, the Town has been very quiet and there have been a lot of shifting glances. Some shop windows and doors are being mended, and several Townies sport deep bruises, but when I've asked them where such signs of devastation have come from, they won't talk to me. Even the Peacekeepers seem more stoic than normal. Something has been going on that makes this place feel less alive than usual. It's easier to hide the depression of this town in the winter, but in the cooling autumn season, it's absurd to think that no children's voices are heard in the street, and no shoppers can be heard from the market on Market Day. Even the abominable Miss Vetta Cordwip wears a smile less frequently, and she seems to have developed a nervous tick; she's always looking to the corner of her ceiling as if she's listening for something. She speaks less and uses shorter words. In the end, my conversations with her last less than five minutes. I meant to get to the bottom of it, but then the morning sickness began, and suddenly I had no time.

No one sees us off. Jesse gets upset when the train starts moving, but I do my best to calm his nerves. It isn't until he touches my stomach and gets a strange glow in his eyes and face that I see him calm down gradually. Anyway, with District 10 being one of the districts closer to the Capitol, we arrive shortly before nightfall. For Jesse, this is a moment that he never dreamed of, and he looks about as strangely out of place as the Capitol folk look out of place. He tries to start up a conversation with an Avox, but that ends quickly. In all, he's handling his first trip to the Capitol very well. We are taken directly to the President's Mansion, bypassing the Avenue of the Tributes, but I know Jesse recognizes it from the screening of the Hunger Games because he looks up at the exterior of the great Circus and lets his mouth drop to the ground.

"That's where…" I nod, pushing his hand down and curling his pointing finger.

"Remember, only _one_ comes back." I say. He curls all his fingers around my hand and shivers. There are no banners announcing the 19th Annual Hunger Games hanging from the exterior of the Circus, but the celebration banners are being hoisted up as the Capitol leads Panem in preparing for the Victory Tour of its 19th Hunger Games Victor. Despite the protection of the mountains, the streets of the Capitol have a light dusting of snow on them. Jesse works hard not to drop his jaw again when we reach the imposing but regal mansion of President Snow. Outside and above the entrance archway, the maroon and gold flag of Panem is draped from the building. There is a small welcoming party waiting for us beneath it. When we are brought in and offered something hot to drink, we're separated and led to our respective rooms.

Mine is on the second floor, down a corridor that echoes when it is trodden. The escort and her Avox companion step aside as they open the door for me. I thank them in dismissal and then turn and enter the apartment. And I jump. Because there, in the flesh, waiting for me is the man himself: President Coriolanus Snow.


	26. Chapter 24: Deane Scythe

_**CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:**_

Deane Scythe

The strangest things come to mind when you're unconscious. In my mind, I was reliving the days Moxie and I had spent together in the last two months. Some of this reminiscing was perpetuated by my lapses of lucidity during which I thought I heard Moxie's voice, but the dreamlike state I reverted to always featured those long autumn days that sloped into winter, first gently and then dramatically. First, I was shocked that she had made an effort to come out looking for me, but I was more stunned at how quickly we both accepted that we were in a situation that required us to look beyond our initial distrusts and prejudices of the other in order to focus on the effort of surviving. I think the moment when all that changed was when she put her head on my shoulder. It was a weird feeling, an uncomfortable feeling, and an inviting feeling that overtook me in immediate response. Next, I think of how I was getting comfortable with her head resting on my shoulder, until suddenly she slouched over and fell into my lap! Her snores were more audible then, and once more I was confronted with complicated feelings that – being incapable of working themselves out naturally – left me indecisive and ultimately being used as a large pillow. She moved, now and then, but very little, and I determined it was all I could do to try to sleep myself.

The next morning brought new discoveries, which my memory only vaguely recalls now. For one, the ring of Peacekeepers appeared to be around the Compound still, according to Moxie who determined it would be better for her to be a scout than me, since capturing her would be woefully unhelpful for anyone since she wouldn't say a thing. She made a point, repeatedly, to remind me that she was doing none of this for me, but even then I believe I knew she was lying. I can recall the first few days being long and drawn because I could do nothing except hide – on Moxie's express orders – while she ventured out to explore and to scavenge. We didn't eat very well in those days because Moxie was wary of venturing onto the Gaming Reserve, and when she did, the pickings were slim but relatively bountiful. There is, after all, only so much hawk you can eat before it stops feeding you. And the endeavor to claim hawk meat wasn't difficult; the weather at this time of the year was the most unpredictable, and those first few days were hot and very humid. It made Moxie irritable. The weather struck unsuspecting birds from the sky, and crows and hawks were like manna from Heaven, in a more or less literal sense.

We drank a fair amount of chamomile tea since chamomile was easy enough to scavenge and Moxie had been clever enough to find a source of water in the canyon. She claimed all Prairie Dogs knew about it, but I thought she was lying. Anyway, if she _knew_ about it, she took her _blessed_ time finding it. Once it was found, though, we escaped the danger of being dehydrated, and I can definitely thank Moxie for that. Another memorable aspect of those relentless days was that we spoke to each other very little. The easiness that had come in our first conversation had slid away, and at the time it seemed like it would never return. And then that pivotal breaking point came when our lives shifted from being adamantly apart to intensely together. I remember the conversation word for word because you don't tend to forget those moments easily.

It had been another mercilessly hot and equally viciously humid day, and so much so that Moxie allowed me to leave the cave to fetch water, after she had done the deed herself more than fifteen times. She had already described to me where to find the source, and I – being a diligent (or perhaps desperate) learner – found it with ease. The ledge upon which we had first landed – which hosted a small dirt path along the narrow edges of the canyon wall, some of which were smaller than a foot and forced us to shimmy our way along with our backs against the wall – crumbled down a slope, ultimately falling apart at the basin of a very thin ribbon of water leaking from the underground into the gorge of the canyon. From here, the drop was less than seven feet and could be managed with care, but most importantly, the canyon had a built in option with natural stepping stones jutting from its side, each about a stride's length from the next. We were able to skip from one stone to the next with relative ease, making an easier descent than a nearly vertical seven foot drop. These details would be meaningless if it weren't for the fact that they played an important role in helping us… well, _me_ in this case… transport water. Dropping the seven feet could have been perilous because of the mess of stones at its foot, but scaling it was no threat, and once the water skin Moxie had brought was bulging with water, I used the stepping stones to hold the water skin while scaling the seven foot drop. In the end, the only thing to drop in the entire operation was the earth. I spilled not a single drop of water.

Upon returning to our cave, I found Moxie lying out on the stone floor. She didn't move as I came in and I thought she might have passed out from the heat, but when I went to shake her in alarm, her eyes snapped open and she gave me a terrific scowl that sent me back a safe distance from her. "Water?" she demanded, and I handed it to her. She drained the skin and tossed it back to me. "More." This process repeated itself several times more, until finally she held up her hand as I entered the cave and said, "No. You drink it now. You need it." When I'd finished the supply in the water skin, she took it and filled it again. When she returned, she sat across from me as I drank. "It was a long time ago," she said in a voice not wholly her own. "And I shouldn't remember it, but I do." She mopped her brow and met my eyes directly. "A day like this that led to a night like this that led to my mother dying and my brothers surviving." I felt that same feeling of discomfort and intrigue.

"My parents died too," I offered when the silence thickened the space between us. "But I can't remember. Or maybe I don't want to."

"Momma was having my brothers the night she passed," Moxie said at last. "Dad tried to put us to sleep, but she was crying like a wounded animal and I lay in bed holding onto Bess really tight, and I think Sissy was doing the same to Bess, and Elka to Sissy. Anyway, we were all awake and listening to Momma crying. Miss Vetta was there. She was birthing Momma. It was a heat that was suffocating, the heat that day and that night, the sort of heat and humidity that makes folks go mad. Every push, Momma got weaker. We're lucky the boys came out at all. I didn't know that _then_ , but I know it _now_. And Dad was scared, even though he never said anything." She looked away. "We all got up at the same time and went into the eating place. Momma looked dried up like a prune; she couldn't speak. Miss Vetta handed Bess the baby and sent us outside, and I remember seeing those dark, dark storm clouds rushing over the sky dome. I remember asking the Fates to drop rain in buckets, to pound the dead earth with rain, to poison the demons taking Momma away. But Momma was taken away before my prayers were answered." She shakes her head. "Why do some folks get to live and other folks get to die?"

"It's all a game," I said, pessimistically. "The Fates throw the dice, we pay their gambler's price. It's all a game of life and death." I quote the Book of Verses.

"How did your parents go?" Moxie asked softly.

"Shotgun to the head," I say. "I think that's how."

"Where'd you come from anyway?"

"Not here. Pretty far away. There's another town with lots of folks in it, but they're all bad folks with weapons like guns and knives. If you're not with them, you're against them, and there it's every man and woman for him and herself. There's an evil place called a saloon where Dad went in to settle a score with some really bad guy. He never came back. I think that's how it went." I squeezed my eyes shut trying to remember exactly how it happened. "Oh… they saw Thatcher and he looked like Dad, so we had to run, him and me."

"What about your Momma?"

"I don't remember what happened to her," I said. "I think I have made myself forget because all I think about when I think of her is screaming, clothes tearing. It's awful."

"Drink your water, Deane," Moxie said as she got up and took a seat next to me. "Hey," she said after I finished the water. "We're not going to play the game the Fates play, are we?" I shook my head. "Good. Because I _hate_ gamblers."

I think I can hear Moxie now. She seems to cut through my haziness, but when I try to open my eyes, everything hurts from my neck up. So, I surrender and drop back into the haziness of times past.

Moxie catches a pair of rabbits off the Gaming Reserve. The hottest days were shattered by an intense thunderstorm a few days before she catches the rabbits. After the storm, we have the first monsoon of the season and the rain comes down so heavily that I wonder if it won't break through the ceiling of our cave. It falls like that for a day and a night, and then it stops suddenly. When we check our little ledge-side pathway, we find that the basin of that ribbon of water has filled up, the ribbon replaced by a steadier stream, cascading from the erosion in its cliff-side wall. It's the first time we laugh together. If the Fates are up there gambling, we're on the upside of their spinning wheel of fortune. Just as the end of the storm drew us out, it also drew out the animals that survived it, and that makes easy pickings on the part of the Reserve nearest to us. It's a far corner of the Reserve that virtually no one visits, though everyone knows about it. Moxie lets me come along for the raid, only I have to collect the dead animals struck down in the storm.

"More than half of them will be poisoned, so it won't be worth it, really, but I hate seeing you all cooped up in that cave with nothing to do." That's her reasoning. I don't argue. My arms are full of dead animals when she manages to catch the rabbits. I've never seen her so happy. We take them back to the cave and inspect the other meat from the animals I gathered, and it turns out that most of our stock is edible. The poison from the rain merely kills the skin on the animals and some of that falls apart in my arms as we're coming back to the cave. Beneath it, the meat is pretty tough but not poisonous. And that's how we began to learn how to survive.

A few nights later, the temperature drops suddenly and the slow descent into the cold season ends. We're heading toward winter at a much faster pace because the next morning, the sun feels cooler than before. Moxie teaches me how to measure the arc of the sun with a stick and stones, and we set up what she calls a "sun dial". The stones trace the perimeter in a circle while a large stick is staked into the center of the circle. At the cardinal directions (which I teach her about) we put larger stones. After she explains to me how it works, I explain to her how we can tell the time of year by the shadows cast by the posts of the fences that mark up the Ranches.

"Short shadows and hot weather go together. Long shadows and cold weather go together also," I tell her.

She checks the view of the Compound, but it looks like nothing has changed. In the first day we spent here, she thought she heard something happen out there, but I thought I heard something too and considered it a distant stampede of livestock. On this particular day I'm dreaming about, I remember how concerned it made her to look out and see the Peacekeepers still standing there like they'd never moved.

"They're all so close together, I can't even see a peep into the Compound." She reported back to me.

"What about the road? Are the cowboys still there?" I asked.

"No. They've been gone since the storm. It's one reason why I let you go on the Reserve." I take that as a non-admission that she is concerned about me. "I want to go closer," she said. "Something's not right. I feel it in my bones."

"Okay," I begin. "But not today, please." She complies. I hope she takes that as my non-admission that I'm concerned about her too. She says the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next, and each time she complies when I ask her, "Not today, please?" And then two months have passed: we've been measuring time with her sun dial and my shadow tracking.

The evening when the season officially turned from cool to cold, Moxie asked me about Thatcher.

"What's he really like?"

"Well, he's my brother," I begin, not sure how to answer the question because I'm not sure what she's asking me. "He's a hard worker and he puts up with a lot of stuff."

"What's the _one_ _thing_ you miss about him?" She asks so suddenly I am caught off guard.

"His smile." I smile. "He always has one on his face. Well, not _always_ but more often than not."

"Sounds like Bess," Moxie snorts. "She's always so _darn_ happy! Well, not _always_ but more often than not." I grin when she repeats my words back to me.

"What else do you like about Bess?" I ask, figuring it's a fair question.

"She sees good in me," Moxie says in a voice that is not her own. "Even when I'm wicked."

"I don't understand," I say, puzzled by this seemingly drastic turn.

"You know, she makes little comments about the most insignificant things I do, like brushing her hair in the morning or nudging her awake gently so she doesn't jump and hit the other girls, or how I seem to _know_ when she's being annoyed by our brothers and stop them instinctively before they can start on her. Those little things."

"It sounds like she knows you well," I say, thinking about Thatch. "Thatch does something that really … " I'm at a loss for words because I don't know _how_ I feel about it. It's when Thatch decides to cuddle with me when he gets bad dreams, and how powerful it is to hold him when he's fighting with his nightmares. It makes me feel like his guardian. "He's got this thing he does where he needs to be held when he's having a bad dream because it doesn't wake him but it helps him know that he's not alone. I think that's what it is."

"So… you sleep with him in your bed?" Moxie asks.

"No… but he asks sometimes and when he does, I let him."

"We all sleep in the same bed. I miss having my sisters next to me," she says. "When I had no other choice, it really annoyed me, but out here… I miss it."

That night, as the temperature drops drastically, I wake up and see her shivering. It's an instinct, not a thought process: I lie down at her back and put my arms and my blanket around her, hugging her as I would hug Thatcher on his bad nights. My warmth is willed into her shivering body, and when she stops shivering, we both fall asleep, soundly, hanging on to each other, and refusing to play the gambling game.

I come out of my dream in a different sort of haze. It's an external haze: the sort of haze caused by smoke. Something sweet rises up my nostrils and brings me out of my dream world. I blink a few times and see a rough face of a man leaning close to mine. "He's awake."


	27. Chapter 25: Atoka Menzies

_**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:**_

Atoka Menzies

"Come in, Miss Menzies," President Snow said with the touch of a smile. Up close, Coriolanus Snow looked nothing like the imposing figure from television broadcasts of important announcements for the nation, or the few cameo appearances he made with regard to the Hunger Games. Up close, he looked like an ambitious young adult with a proclivity for wearing bleach-white suits and slicking his hair back. His voice wasn't even that imposing; rather, it had gentleness to it, a lulling quality. Even though it was half his mouth turned aslant, his smile set Atoka both at ease and uneasy. "Please, sit," he offered her the lounging chair – little more than an old Imperial British sitting room seat with no arms or back – and he traced his thin lips with his index finger as he watched her follow his orders. For her part, Atoka didn't rush to sit but made a point of working her way there slowly, waiting for him to pounce on her like the viper she thought him to be, but also watching his every move as an animal of prey is like to do in the presence of a predator. He chuckled as she made the most of sitting down, touching her belly for effect. " _Ah_ , your _delicate_ condition," he nodded, dropping his hand into his lap. "How could I forget?"

"Pardon me, Mr. President," Atoka began, shoving aside her resentful tone to wear a more gracious air about her. "I'm still not used to carrying around a little one. I used to be able to do more."

"Yes, we all know," replied President Snow, softly. Atoka felt her skin crawl as she caught him looking at her in a way that a predator looks at his prey. "Should I order you something to drink? A bite to eat? Whatever you wish, Miss Menzies, simply ask and it shall be given." He spread out his hands in a gesture of offering. Atoka failed to hold back her scowl.

"Thank you, Mr. President."

He studied her for a time that stretched beyond her desire and comfort, and then he said very suddenly, as one who has broken from a trance, " _So_ , shall we talk then?"

"Yes, Mr. President," Atoka replied, smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt. "I suppose you want to know who's the father?"

"Not really, no," the President replied. "Such _mundane_ things don't interest me as much as, perhaps, knowing the mother." His inflection on "mother" sent a shiver up and down Atoka's spine.

"There's not much to know, Mr. President. I'm the Victor of the Seventh Annual Hunger Games. I've recently unsuccessfully mentored two Tributes from District 10 in the Nineteenth Annual Hunger Games. I'm pregnant, and it happened around the end of the Hunger Games." She forced herself to look at President Snow and squinted when he seemed to be studying her again.

"You had a _brother_ in the Hunger Games, didn't you, Miss Menzies?" He asked in a far off sort of voice.

"Duncan. Yeah. He was pulled in the year before me."

"And a sister too. Gladys?"

"Yes. Two years after me." Atoka looked away. She had forgotten about Gladys, even though she'd mentored her. Now, as the conversation brought her little sister back to life, Atoka couldn't bare it. She felt sick and jumped up suddenly, her hand to her stomach. "Washroom?" she asked with urgency. President Snow rose swiftly and gracefully, striding to her side and ushering her to a nearly invisible side door at the entrance to the room. He opened it and gestured inside. Atoka rushed to the toilet, threw the lid up and had just leaned over the basin when the bile rushed up and out of her. She sat down on the floor beside the toilet and wrapped her arms around herself, a trait she remembered from childhood. President Snow – to his credit in her mind – did not follow her into the washroom but stood outside it, leaning against the wall. When the threat of more sickness had passed, Atoka flushed the toilet and got to her feet, staggering a little, crossed to the washing basin and faucet, and washed her face and hands, swirling some water in her mouth to clear the taste. As she made her way out of the washroom, there was a knock on the door which President Snow answered, blocking the visitor from view. Atoka made her way back to her seat and was smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt again when President Snow brought a card table and a small platter of breakfast foods to her. There was toasted muffins with apple butter smeared across them and sinking into their crannies, slices of toasted white and wheat breads smeared with blackberry jam and orange marmalade, a saucer of milk and a cup of tea, and several slices of citrus fruit. Atoka could smell each piece of the ensemble distinctly.

"Eat," he said, and then he took his seat and waited. It took a few minutes before Atoka gave in to temptation and took a bite from the citrus fruit slices. "I want to talk about what happened at your Homecoming Feast at Mr. G. W. Burliss's ranch," he said when she'd finished her slice. "I've had a few reports from other sources that appear to contradict each other in the facts of events that happened. What do _you_ say happened, Miss Menzies?"

With some effort, Atoka took herself back to that evening.

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Jesse boy. I'd be lucky to have a sweetheart like you. But my life is complex right now, so if you're still interested, ask me again next year." The cowboy nodded and the conversation ended. Five minutes later, Atoka took Jesse's hand and walked with him to the door. She was dressed in a light green evening dress, cut two inches below her knees, and she wore thonged sandals of the sort sported by the ladies in the frescoes that she'd seen once while in the Capitol. The shoulders of her dress were thin but extra fabric fell from them to cover her upper arms. Her outfit complimented the minor colors in Jesse's plaid shirt – a detail he had picked up with a quickening heart, but a detail he'd kept quiet – and when they met the usual cowboys on the short walk to Mr. Gordon Walkerson Burliss's ranch, the enthusiasm for courting her had waned. Jesse thought it might have to do with the subtle way they complemented each other, but in the back of his mind, he wondered if it wasn't something else too. A noticeable number of cowboys had been missing here and there since the ranch hand had escaped, and the presence of Peacekeepers in the Ranches (and on the road between the Compound and the Town… called Mills, for no comprehensible reason) had increased in relation to the number of cowboys who went missing. If _anyone_ knew what was going on, truthfully, it wasn't Jesse or his fellow cowboys. Yet, as he looked around this gangly crew of cowboys – many of whom were Mr. Burliss's – he had a sneaking suspicion that one among them (maybe two) had answers.

For her part, Atoka had played hard-to-get well, and her grace as a Victor was well known both in the Town (without a name, to her knowledge) and in the Ranches. She knew her reputation at home; abroad, however, she had been relatively surprised that anyone in the Capitol had taken her into their hearts, and yet two men had done so: one of them had taken her a little further. Actually, _both_ had, but in different ways. She had prepared for the usual banter, showing off and cat-calling from the cowboys on the way to the feast, and though some of that did happen, most of it didn't. The cowboys, also fewer in number, were more reticent than usual. Randy, one of Mr. Burliss's cowboys, wasn't usually this quiet: he'd often tried to pick fights with Jesse to impress Atoka, and his recent stunts had been much riskier than Atoka cared for when it came to entertain her before the rest of the cowboys.

"Randy," she called out. "Cat got your tongue? I've never seen you so quiet and peaceful. Are you getting soft on me?" Well, he didn't like that, based on his scowl in response to her, and the other cowboys – devoid of something else to do – laughed at him.

"I've always been soft _for_ you," Randy shot back. "You've just been hard on me, twisting my breaking heart around by going along with that Jesse kid there." There was more laughter in response, and Jesse hooked arms with her.

" _I've_ been _hard_ on _you_?" Atoka laughed. "Do you know how I got to be a Victor, Mr. Randy?" They were all listening to her. "I _killed_ folks." Instead of laughter, there was a sudden silence, and Randy's expression changed. He looked a mix of angry and ashamed. At first Atoka thought he'd stumbled, but Jesse jerked her back as he pulled up right in front of her, his face dangerously close to hers.

"You know how I got to be a _cowboy_?" he hissed. Everyone who'd stopped heard him, but those few cowboys who'd continued walking didn't notice any change. To Atoka's added surprise, Jesse got between her and Randy, getting up in Randy's face.

"You got here like the rest of us… through the favor of Mr. Burliss… and don't you forget it." A few more cowboys slipped away as Jesse and Randy stared each other down.

"How could I forget the _magnificence_ of my cow-man?" Randy spat back. Atoka watched them size each other up, their banter still reasonably in the realm of sarcasm, though dangerously close to actual fighting. She looked to the holster partially concealed at Jesse's hip, knowing that cowboys were permitted to carry a firearm. The danger of the situation was familiar to her, but she'd never been on the outside of it. Now that she was, she didn't like it. She tugged on Jesse's hand and broke the moment.

"Come on, boys," she forced a laugh. "Everyone knows I'm a killer." Jesse let her pull him away from Randy and toward Mr. G. W. Burliss's ranch a few paces away. The tension between those two, though, did not let up throughout the night.

During the bull-riding, Mrs. Cheneye Dickson sat down beside Jesse. They were not far from Atoka, but she couldn't hear much of their conversation. What she did catch was cryptic at best. He spoke first.

"Randy." Mrs. Dickson nodded.

"I thought he might be one." They sat watching the cowboys try to ride their bulls. "Is he in the lists?"

"No." Jesse said. "Who's the new ranch hand?" Jesse pointed out a skinny, dark-haired boy on the side of the room, biting his fingernails and watching raptly.

"Walkerson calls him Biter." They smirked. "I wonder why."

And then, the rider was thrown from his bull, and Biter leapt into action, warding off the bull with some sort of magic ill-possessed by the other ranch hands present. When he turned in profile to the audience, Atoka noticed some bruising on his wrists. It was a detail only a hunter could pick out because he was moving quickly and had only exposed his wrists in that moment, brief as it was; and when she turned her attention back to Mrs. Dickson and Jesse, their conversation had ended. Mrs. Dickson was making her way up to Atoka as the cowboy and Biter were rushing out of the ring. Atoka caught Mr. Burliss watching them like a hawk, and immediately she wondered what was happening beyond her vision.

President Snow traced his lips again as he listened to Atoka's recollection. "Did you not suspect anything between Mrs. Cheneye Dickson, your cowboy, Randy and Mr. Gordon Walkerson Burliss?" he asked when she had finished to that point.

"What was there to suspect?"

" _Something_ subtle," he said curtly.

"I noticed odd details, Mr. President, but none of them seemed connected," Atoka replied, irritated at the interrogation. "I was brought here under the pretense that you wanted to speak about my pregnancy and you wanted to know who the father is."

"Yes, and I do. I know you had a relationship with Mr. Cor Lee." He shrugged, throwing up his hands. "What can we do. The heart wants what the heart wants. It's a pity he's engaged to marry a Gamesmaker, though. I _hope_ you weren't thinking you could come back here and take him for a husband." President Snow watched Atoka as she suppressed her reaction to this melodramatic news: of course Cor would be engaged to someone more significant than her! She decided she'd rather not play into President Snow's game, though, since she was certain he was trying to shock her.

"I didn't know you were so close with Cor," she smiled coquettishly. President Snow grinned back at her, showing a line of perfectly white teeth.

"Do you know what I like most about you, Miss Menzies?" he asked.

"I didn't think you liked me at all, Mr. President," Atoka returned with a backhand challenge.

"Quite the _contrary_ , Miss Menzies," the President said, raising his inflection. "You are one of my most likable Victors. The thing I like _most_ about you is that you think and act as though all of this is a game." Atoka felt like lashing out at him. She restrained herself and President Snow was aware. "Perhaps even _the_ Game. You have this way of hiding your true self from everyone you meet," he studied her again with those piercing eyes that set her on edge. "This way of putting on a character that is everything you are _not_."

"I learn from the greatest character actor in the nation," Atoka challenged, mirroring his slant smile.

"Oh Miss Menzies, I think you're losing your touch. See, I've never lied to anyone about who I am. And yet," he furrowed his brows dramatically. "You never tell anyone the _truth_ of who you are. I find that fascinating, but I think it is nothing like me." For the first time since sitting down, Atoka felt the cheeriness of the smile she put on.

"Oh Mr. President, I think you're losing _your_ touch." Coriolanus Snow raised his eyebrows, his eyes twinkling. "See, I wasn't referring to you, Mr. President." Atoka was certain President Snow's eyebrows couldn't go much higher.

"No?" he asked. "Then who?"

"Who else?" Atoka said, going for the landing. "Mr. Gordon Walkerson Burliss." President Snow's face drooped: his mouth turned down in a straight line, his eyebrows fell and the twinkle in his eyes vanished.

"Walkerson," he repeated.

"The very man." Atoka responded.

"That's interesting." President Snow sat back in his chair and began stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Why do you think _he's_ playing a role?"

"I think they _all_ are, but he's the best at it." Atoka replied.

"And what is he lying about?"

"I don't know," Atoka said. "Whatever it is, it is big. I wouldn't be surprised if we started losing cow-men mysteriously." President Snow's faced emptied of its color.

"What do you want, Miss Menzies?"

"Cor Lee," she said, adamantly. "I don't care _how_ , I _do_ care _when_. When I return to District 10, he's a free man." The president studied her for a long time. Atoka had no real expectations that her request would be granted. She marveled at President Snow's ability to hold suspense and tension without saying a word, and in that void of words, she began to study him. He _was_ a young man, but he had an old man's eyes. He was slow to respond emotionally and yet very skillfully quick with his wit. He understood far more than he revealed, and she could tell that he revealed less than 1% of what he understood. She also decided that he had played a significant role in this year's Hunger Games, one way or another, and that his signature was on each of the twenty-three death warrants carried out in high fashion throughout the Games; perhaps he'd personally decide how the District 10 Tributes died from this point onward, now that she was challenging him to concede something.

"Deal," he said suddenly. "In exchange for you doing a small task for me," he continued. The moment of stunned joy that had washed over Atoka quickly dried out as she comprehended his _quid pro quo_ objective.

"Yes, Mr. President. What would you have me do?"

"You told the cowboys you became a Victor by killing. I can see that you are still playing the Hunger Games, and as well as offering to you a husband and a family life, I want to offer you a chance to _truly_ win the Games." The meaning behind his words sank in all at once.

"Who must I kill," Atoka asked, setting her jaw. President Snow grinned.

The train took Jesse and Atoka back to District 10 the following morning. Their evening had been spent quietly, given free range of the mansion (except the executive, legislative and judicial wings) Atoka and Jesse explored. It was a building with many open and airy rooms. Atoka found one in which the frescoes she had seen once long ago were being housed and she was enthusiastic in her showing them to Jesse. He had some questions of her initially, most concerning her meeting with President Snow, and she responded to each _exactly_ as Snow had rehearsed with her to do. But in the evening, after a delicious dinner with some choice members of the public including Mr. Phinehas Gideon, Mr. Romulus Cane, a wolfish looking woman called Tamora, the women who had sponsored Panem's nineteenth Victor and the president, Atoka had put a wedge between herself and Jesse. In her room, she went through all that had happened in her meeting with Snow, what she was set to gain and what District 10 was set to lose. Her assignment was clear but complicated. She had developed a personal relationship with her victim in a way that made this job a tough one. Of course, they only saw each other once a year on purpose, but each meeting drew her closer to her victim, and even now she felt certain that this would be the most atrocious kill of all. Of course, it also meant that she would be invited to the Capitol again, once proof of death was received, and there she'd be treated to a mental rehabilitation process that would officially re-write her experience of the world, reverting back to the days _before_ she went into the arena, the days when she could live without knowing what it felt like to destroy the lives of innocent children. That gain, along with Cor and their child, was very nearly worth the cost. Jesse made a few vain attempts to see her, but each time she kept quiet and waited for him to leave. After the third attempt, he made no more and Atoka was left with a sinking heart. She had until the Victory Tour to plot out the murder. If it was successful, the train returning to District 3 would make a pit stop inside of District 10, and Cor would be escorted to her.

All she had to do was murder Mrs. Dickson.


	28. Chapter 26: Deane Scythe

_**CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:**_

Deane Scythe

"He's awake." Manu said, hitting the shoulder of the man beside him. "What now, _baas_?" His companion turned his attention away from the girl he had been monitoring and made the short journey across the inside of their lean-to, arriving at last over the boy. He nodded, his lips drawn tight with no hint or suggestion of a smile or any pleasure at this revelation. "So, _him_ is, baas?" Manu asked, seeking aural confirmation. His companion merely nodded. Manu ran his hands over his face, rubbing his weary eyes. "We should him turn in, I think. Of this winter, on reward compensation, we could make good start. You tell me when the council meeting to call, _baas_." His companion betrayed a frown and put a hand on Manu's shoulder.

"You may call the council to meet, Émanuel, and we will need to decide, of course, but first, I want to speak to him." The man said. His voice was deep, resonating from a place near his core and vibrating as though it was the voice of the earth, pushing from the center of the world to its surface. Deane watched as both men, Émanuel and his nameless companion, silently spoke through a series of subtle facial expressions and even more subtly through glances. It seemed to him that their language was one wholly unbreakable. At last, Émanuel nodded once and turned away. Deane caught a brief glimpse of a figure lying across the lean-to on a table cushioned by one long pillow. He imagined it was Moxie, though he had little more than fancy to base his belief on. _Whole belief traditions have been formed on as much or less,_ he reassured himself, recalling the brief time he had spent in a strange place called catechism, in another life. The moment - like his recollections of catechism - was so brief that it was over before he could finish his thought. The nameless man peered down at him again. His face was weathered though Deane could have mistaken him for a Prairie Dog, and something about his appearance... perhaps his eyes... looked familiar. Deane tried to think, but it hurt his head to make an effort and he gave up, somewhat willingly. Had he only imagined he'd heard that voice before? All his suspicions were brought to an abrupt end when the man spoke again, this time to Deane. "So, we meet again."

Their conversation had been brief, but when the man left Deane to rest, it was clear that too many thoughts were preventing him from sleeping. For starters, he'd been apprehended by a gang of wanderers, which was as much as they called themselves, and they had brought him back to their camp, knowing that if they left him alone, the cowboys would find him and bring him to their ranch to become a slave until death.

"It's not our primary occupation, but it is important to every man and woman here among us," the man had said.

"What _is_ your purpose then?" Deane had asked, but he'd been given no answer. All the company here had their own purposes and uses, and without each and every one of them, there would be no chance of survival.

"You're a boy of District 10, you know the winters and summers here. These are the songs of the seasons, how we get by." The nameless man had continued to tell Deane some things he wasn't certain he needed to know: the council did not engage in charity, they did not seek unity or peace with the settlements of the District, and they did not stay in one place for very long. "This life is grueling and often unkind," the man had warned. "Some of us are wanted by the Peacekeepers, and some of us a thought to be fables, tall tales told to children for amusement. We would have this anonymity remain. We look after each other." The most important question came next.

"Why are you telling _me_ all this?" Deane asked.

"You are a wanderer now. Once you're with us, there's no going back."

Deane had shaken his head then. "You're wrong. I can _always_ go back." But now, left to ruminate on what he'd been told, Deane wasn't as cocky over his chances. He'd thought it impossible to escape the Ranches, and he'd accomplished that feat, but this one seemed to be more daunting. If he tried an escape, where would he go and what would he find out in the wild of District 10? His head wasn't an issue anymore; when he moved it, there was the promise of some discomfort, but the pain that had kept him under had vanished. With this new dexterity, he took a chance at looking around. Four large wood-cut poles were buried into the ground, standing up straight except for their leaning against each other at the top of the shelter, which was substantially high up. Deane squinted and made out a leather thong tightened around the four poles at their meeting point, the knot making it a tight tie and a secure structure. Aside from looking clean cut, the wood of the poles were not treated, so Deane guessed that they used to be small trees, each cut skilfully at the trunk and – most likely – at the top. Stretched over them as if a tight heavy blanket was a large canvas made of animal's skins; ribbing, running in vertical strips up the structure, connected each piece of canvas. Deane traced each line with his eyes, following to the flap that might have hung loose in the breeze if it the leather thong stitching didn't loop along the inside edge and hook to metal spurs – at least that was what they looked like – flattened and curled to serve the purpose of hook. The hooks were stitched into the canvas flap beside its looser companion. The overall effect was a make-shift door between the outside world and the world inside. Considering the low howling on the other side of the canvas, Deane supposed the world inside was warmer than the world outside. He couldn't tell what time of day it was, as he looked at the space beneath the "door" into the shelter, but the light was weak and the shadows inside were large. These thoughts brought his attention, at last, to the girl lying across the shelter from him. They were roughly at the east-west cardinal points of the circular shelter, and between them, at center, was a warm fire: its smoke made certain identification of the girl impossible, but of what he could make out, he was hopeful that the familiar outline belonged to Moxie.

 _Moxie_ : at one point, Deane reflected, the name would have produced an equal and opposite reaction to the leap he felt in his chest. _We've been so long together, it's silly to think she_ wouldn't _be important to me_. He shrugged it away, even though his lone success was in convincing himself that he wasn't thinking about her... as he was _thinking about her_. He'd only let her go for a minute, but that had been all the Fates needed to spirit her away; if that figure across the shelter was hers, this would present a very rare opportunity to take a hold of her and never let go. While he _wasn't_ thinking about her, he knew that when he found her again, he'd never leave her side, nor would he let her wander from him either. They had survived together through an impossible summer heat and into the early stretches of winter; he didn't want to sing the songs of the seasons without her harmony. He shrugged that thought away too, with as much success as his first try. These sorts of thoughts he'd only had for Thatcher; he didn't _want_ to have them: they caused so much agony that he couldn't bear to have such thoughts for anyone else than his brother. Clearly, the Fates had other plans designed for him because, to this point he knew he was doing poorly at not thinking about Moxie, and _now_ he could think of no one else.

"Moxie?" he called out weakly from his side. The figure across from him stirred. She turned her head around slowly and squinted through the smoke. She was covered in shadows therefore Deane could not see her clearly. "Moxie?" he tried again, his voice a little stronger. The girl bowed her head.

"What do _you_ want?" she said. Her voice was changed – affected somehow – but underneath the changes, Deane could tell it was her!

"MOXIE! It's Deane!" he said, excitedly. Slipping off his table, he tried to rush across the shelter, but fell. His feet were bear and their tips were blackened. This description did little to explain how they felt, though: _pain_ wasn't even an adequate word. Before he had a chance to struggle to his feet again, Moxie was beside him, lifting him up onto the table again. He looked into her face to be certain it was her, and the eyes that stared back were wild and bloodshot, dark curves underscoring them dramatically, her pupils dilated but her expression distant.

"I know it's Deane," she snapped in a hushed voice. "You shouldn't have followed me." Deane scowled at her.

"Why? Because you were planning how to run away all along?" he accused, uncertain about his meaning behind the accusation. Did he really think she had been trying to get away from him? Perhaps a small part of him thought she was capable of being subversive like that, but he'd packed five feet of dirt on that small part because he'd never had reason to doubt her after that first three days.

" _Don't_ be _stupid_ , Deane," she shot back. "If I was planning to run away, do you _think_ I'd run into _danger_?" Deane frowned at her, but in response she cast an ostentatious glance around the shelter and returned her questioning gaze to Deane.

"What is this place?" Deane asked in a hushed voice.

"It's the camp of the Wild Folk," Moxie said, a slight sense of fear creeping into her voice. "Only it's not _just_ the Wild Folk here." She had no time to say more because there were footsteps outside the shelter, and at the sound of them Moxie dashed across the shelter and lay back down on her resting spot, casting one final warning glance at Deane before she resumed the pretense of being asleep. Deane swung his blackened toes up onto the table and reclined as the two men materialized inside the shelter from outside. The man who had spoken with Deane made his way to Moxie and appeared to stand over her, watching her for a long time. The other man, Manu, went to Deane. Manu looked like he might be part Wild Folk and part something civilized. He wore furs laden with snowflakes, his face was weathered and worry marks were etched deeply into his skin so that he looked like he wore a frown perpetually. He didn't speak to Deane as he rounded the table and lifted one of Deane's feet to inspect his toes. He muttered something like _paa bohn_ and shook his head. He dropped Deane's foot and looked up at Deane as heel met tabletop. Deane winced but stared back defiantly. Manu's expression changed. "Pas mal," he said. "That hurt?" he asked Deane in a strangely accented voice.

"You dropped my injured foot, you spineless idiot," Deane spat. " _Does_ that hurt? _Yes_!" Manu smiled.

"It good," he said and seized the other foot more roughly. Deane tried to swat at him but couldn't reach, and his failure caused Manu to laugh a dry cackle. Then, he thrust Deane's foot down, causing Deane to yelp. " _That_ hurt?" he asked again, though this time Deane was sure it was because this man was a vicious little bastard. The other man approached Manu and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Enough," he said and everything stopped. "Can you walk?" he asked Deane.

"Not any _more_ ," Deane spat in Manu's direction.

"Try," said the other man. He nodded to Manu who moved behind Deane and lifted him up off the table, despite some wriggling and thrashing from the patient himself, propping the boy up against the table's edge and straightening his feet on the ground. "Try," the man repeated. Deane took a very cautious step forward. His toes protested every amount of pressure put on them, but Deane was more interested in being defiant toward his captors than responsible for himself, so he gritted his teeth and took a few more painful steps. "No," the man said as Deane began to deal with the pain and walk easier. "You're not fit. Manu will have to carry you. You must come with us." Deane protested as Manu strode toward him and lifted him into the cradle of his arms.

" _Where_ are you taking me?" he demanded.

"Council Meeting," the man said, dryly. Then, he put on a smile. "We're going to decide what to do with you, brother wanderer."

They were very cautious to keep the identity of their location hidden from Deane. Rather than carry him directly outside, Manu brought him to the back of the shelter first, wrapped him tight in a few layers of furs, and then tossed him haphazardly over his shoulder, cackling all the while, "That hurt? That hurt? That hurt?" Deane made him out to be both a vicious little bastard _and_ a simpleton. After being hoisted over Manu's shoulder, Deane was taken outside. He could see only the tracks of footprints in the snow, and he could feel and hear the wind as it danced around the camp, but the physical structures of the camp were invisible to him as he could only look at Manu's back or the ground on either side of him. The trek was short, though others joined in it as they made their way to the council meeting. Deane was aware that they had entered a large room when the environment around him changed dramatically: no more was there snow on the ground but in its place, packed earth with dead flattened grass and patches of soil showing, the smell of smoke from a greater fire than the one in the shelter, and the sound of a myriad of voices – high, low and midrange, male and female – echoing off solid walls. When he was put down – an act done with surprising gentleness – Deane took in the new building.

It had a skeleton of thin wood poles arched so that the tops were buried opposite their bottoms in the earth, Two long poles ran from one end of the building to the other, each on the upper corners of the sides of the structure, and the poles stretching the width of the building were tied with leather thongs to the poles running the length of it. In the center of the skeleton, length-wise, a larger pole ran from one end to the other, a small hole cut in its center. The hole stood above the fire – an _oculus_ of a sort – and gave ventilation for the smoke to drift through. Long strips of animal skin canvasses stretched over the skeleton of the building, and each canvas – treated in the same fashion as that of the shelter – was attached, additionally, to the poles running the width of the building. Their attachments were of strips of leather stitched into the canvas, and tied in knots to the poles. Ultimately, Deane concluded, this building was made to be more permanent than the shelter he'd come from because the skins looked hardened by weather, and their tautness Deane assumed accounted for the echoing of voices.

He looked around him at the people in the building. They were all wearing furs, all sitting around the fire and all talking to each other at the same time. No one wore a fur that looked much different from the next person so their gender identities were hard to distinguish for Deane. Focusing on their voices didn't help either: if there were women among them, they had low voices; if there were men among them, they had high voices. He gave up and sat where he'd been placed, which was close to the fire but not so close to the "council". It didn't matter that he was there by the way the folk took notice of him, which was another way of saying that there was no extraordinary notice being taken of him. A few faces turned when he was brought in but by the time he got to looking around him, they had shifted their attentions elsewhere. If he'd been able to understand them in their conversations – which were not entirely in his language but a mix of several languages spoken intermittently (depending on the conversation pair) – he'd have understood that much more notice of him was being taken than it appeared: he was the topic of conversation, along with another well worn thread concerning Moxie and the nameless man. All conversations ceased when the nameless man stepped forward and was joined by a person Deane immediately knew to be a woman. The woman was dressed in flowing cloth, tight from her waist to her neck but billowing below her waist to the floor. She wore a pair of feathers in her hair and a fur cloak covered her shoulders and fell to her waist, open in the front and fastened below her chin. She wore a fierce expression on her face, and by it her entire presence commanded silence – perhaps awed silence – and respect. All attention was on the pair.

"We now the council meeting begin," the nameless man bellowed.

Deane followed along as best as he could, but the way they spoke made it difficult for him to understand what was being said. He thought they began with a discussion about sustainability in their current location, which was a discussion that prompted a number of the Wild Folk to give their own opinions – all of which differed from the next person, based on how they argued with each other – but it was when the woman raised her hand that all fell silent. She spoke deliberately but not in the language Deane understood. Her word, it seemed, was final because the topic was not pursued further when she had finished speaking. The nameless man led them into another topic, which Deane thought was about food. He was given no confirmation about this guess, however; it was also a heated debate for a select few folk but they managed to reach some sort of agreement among themselves because their arguments did not last as long. They spoke about winter, Deane guessed based on their physical gestures, and on this topic there was no debate. Finally, the nameless man turned to face Deane and all gazes followed except for the woman beside the nameless man.

"A guest we have. His name Deane is. The ranch boy he is who escaped. Him we have found; _about_ him we must decide now. Should with us he stay? Must he to death go?" Deane looked around the room, his sense heightened by the suggestion that death was an option to wager on. He met the eyes of all the council but the woman beside the nameless man. No one spoke, but many bore condemning eyes, some bore hungry eyes, some bore scheming eyes, others (surprisingly) sorrowful eyes. Deane couldn't guess what the verdict was based on these different expressions but he knew that whatever it might be would be nuanced, and in the end he might have wished for a death sentence – should he be given life. Hadn't he just escaped from a situation of that nature? _Work to Live, Live to Work_. He repeated the hateful phrase over many times while the tension mounted in the room. All those eyes containing all those thoughts and no spoken words; he had never felt more cornered before than he did now. It was the woman who spoke, though, and to Deane's astonishment, she spoke his language as he might speak it.

"Deane lives because he is meant to live. If we decide that he must die, we will never know the reason for his light in the world. If we decide that he must live for the sake of reward compensation, we may as well kill him ourselves. If we decide that he must live and make use of him," her sentence ended abruptly and for the first and only time that they would know each other, she looked at him. He'd seen her before, not with his waking eyes. Sometimes Thatcher said he saw the Fates when he was asleep, and Deane had always told him not to talk like that because those types of folk always ended up with a bad ending to their stories. His scolding was intended not for Thatch though but for himself for also being visited by the Fates (so he thought) in times of greatest hardship. He knew in that moment, beyond a doubt, he was looking at the Wisdom Woman, though she was much younger in person than in his visitations. She gave him pause and he knew that she knew it. When the moment had matured beyond use, she spoke again. "Somehow, he has an important choice to make. We are pebbles on his path. Do we trip him now? Do we lie in wait for him to pass by? Do we close the cracks between us and give him safe passage?" They looked into each other a moment longer and then the gaze was broken. The woman looked away and went quiet again, and though Deane continued to look at her, she would never look upon him again. The nameless man raised his arms and the decision-making began. Deane was asleep when Manu picked him up again and brought him to rest in the shelter at the conclusion of the council. They had made a decision, but it could wait for Deane to wake.

Drake Tyler waited a long time before leaving the woman and entering the shelter wherein lay his protégé and his oldest daughter. She had many things to tell him yet, but he had stopped her from speaking them; in his heart, Drake had known that the Fates brought Moxie and Deane together for a purpose and he'd known from the moment he'd first seen the boy in the Compound. Bidden to look for a strange boy in need, it had been on that night a couple months ago that Deane's worth had been determined in Drake's mind. Now, as he hesitated outside their lean-to, he factored in all that had just happened, all that he remembered from his young adulthood and all that the woman had told him _might yet_ happen. Taking a deep breath, he envisioned the Old Fifty Yards Tree with its dead branches stretched out eerily, like arms waiting to embrace a body or two, and with his new knowledge he inserted the two bodies connected by necklaces of rope to the branches. Side by side, hands held, they swung in the breeze, lifeless, free.


	29. Chapter 27: Moxie Tyler

_**CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:**_

Moxie Tyler

There they were again: footsteps on the frozen earth! Moxie had tried to ignore them several paces back, but now she couldn't; she'd heard them clearly. This part of District 10 seemed to lie in an abominable slumber beneath a thick covering of snow-laden clouds overhead. Only the moaning of the Old Fifty Yards Tree's limbs as they clapped like brittle hands drawn and bone-thin from starvation and exhaustion broke the seemingly impenetrable sound barrier of silence. The ominous whooshing of the wind as it crossed the open plain undeterred was primary among the few sounds Moxie heard, and the footsteps were definitely secondary. Nonetheless, they remained within the compendium of sound effects on this particular wintry day. Despite the natural cushion the new fallen snow provided under foot, there they were again: footsteps, breaking the icy ground, somewhere behind her. She would have ignored them if she hadn't heard them twice before now. It was no longer a coincidence; Moxie knew she was being followed.

 _Only a_ fool _would venture outside in these temperatures,_ Moxie thought cruelly. _That boy!_ Moxie was anxious to put distance between her and Deane for this reason: he didn't know how to survive in this sort of weather because he'd always been taken care of by the cow-men. _She_ had done a damn good job taking care of herself and the other Tylers in all seasons for years, so she was more capable of surviving out here than him. Besides, he had the subtlety of a bull when it came to it, so he'd get caught if he followed her here. All of these were very good reasons for him to have listened to her in the first place and to have stayed put, but he was as stubborn as she was, which she had learned to like about Deane, and of course that meant he wouldn't listen to her if he made his mind up to do what he liked. She'd had a hard enough time getting away in the first place, having to endure him asking her to not go for so many weeks; he didn't get that it was her family he was keeping her from seeing, checking up on. _Just because he left his brother behind doesn't mean that we are all as hard-hearted as him. Bess wouldn't let me do anything_ but _go and leave her._ Moxie kicked the nearest drift pile of snow, wincing when she found that, in fact, it was blanketing a solid ball of ice. _It was never my idea to leave._ There were footsteps again, four of them, even, one falling rhythmically after the first. Moxie surveyed the plains and concluded that there was nowhere she could hide to get away from her pursuers. She couldn't gauge how fine-tuned their tracking abilities were either: the bleak landscape offered no variation from flat and wide. She was not far from the Old Fifty Yards Tree, which she looked to now with a sense of questioning: were its old branches _too_ old to hold her weight if she chose to climb them? Something else caught her glance then, something beyond the Tree, and it made her mind up for her. Picking up her pace, Moxie reached the Old Fifty Yards Tree within minutes of pausing and felt for any footholds in the smooth, decaying trunk. Her hand found the grooves in that piece of bark that had come off when she was pursuing Deane, several weeks ago, and she peeled away the covering to its hollow, carefully, reaching inside out of some instinctual habit. The hollow was empty, as she assumed it might be, but her heart was racing from the excitement of the chase, from her nervousness about further inspecting what she'd seen, and somewhat about the thought of being pursued by Deane. _He'll have impressed me greatly if he can follow me up this tree_ , Moxie thought as she hoisted her foot up to the hollow in the tree's trunk and used it to propel the rest of her body up into the nook of the Tree, where its branches reached outward and up.

With the first question of leverage answered, the remaining questions of scaling the Old Fifty Yards Tree seemed easier to ask; Moxie tried the first two big branches and found that they were not moved by the wind – clearly a good sign as to answering the question of their stability – but when she began to venture out onto one limb, she could hear it moan awfully, and she quickly backtracked, finding the nook again and trying the next big branch. This one held, and as she perched on it, she surveyed the plain below her. Her pursuant were not in plain sight – which seemed very suspect given the inhospitable landscape, and gave rise to her beginning to doubt her senses (a nearly fatal psychological flaw) – but from this elevation, she could see the Compound much better.

She adjusted her perch to maximize her visibility of the Compound, looking for that hint of movement she'd detected some yards back. The grounds of her home dwelling place were still even in the small continuous breeze that danced across the plain and ruffled the frozen canvasses stretched across some of her neighbors' hovels. The canvasses were never much use except that they shielded their inhabitants from the rain and snow; from frigid temperatures or boiling nights, they were useless. Now, they seemed most useless until Moxie spotted it again, out of the left corner of her eye. One canvas top moved. It flapped as though there was nothing holding it down. If Moxie knew anything about the type of Prairie Dog who would go to the trouble of obtaining a canvas big enough to cover their hovel, she knew that this was an uncharacteristically careless move on their part, to leave a canvas in disrepair.

The wind changed direction, and Moxie lost sight of the anomaly on the Compound. More perplexing, however, was the fact that with that single movement at the Compound, no one standing around the perimeter – the Peacekeepers, in other words – seemed to notice it. Maybe they were used to things moving that shouldn't? But as the wind changed direction, it also gained speed and intensity; it changed from a shivering whoosh to a bone-chilling howl as it whipped across the plain, and as it danced frenetically, it picked up the coat and helmet of a nearby Peacekeeper and lifted them away, exposing to Moxie and any other living person on the plain the truth of the matter: beneath the coat was a skeletal form, marked as if it had been stuck with pins, and all over it was the sort of unhealthy blackening indicative of frost-bitten skin. In fact, Moxie realized with a shiver, the figure didn't even have the stereotypical stockiness of a Peacekeeper. It was a thin, starved corpse… much more like a Prairie Dog. Moxie shimmied back to the nook of the Old Fifty Yards Tree and carefully let herself down its trunk, being sure to replace the strip of bark that covered the hollow in its trunk, and then with a lack of caution she raced herself across the remaining fifty yards to the Compound.

The figures along the perimeter of her home ground did not move as she came charging toward them. The wind shifted and pushed her back in the absence of human resistance, and Moxie had to stop running, catch her breath and quickly wipe away the tears that such a wind brought to her eyes. When she opened them again, she found the bare figure and finished her journey to it. Inspecting the exposed skin, Moxie confirmed what she had feared: the Peacekeepers were literally frozen to death on the perimeter, and this one had drawn the misfortunate lot to be mostly alive while he froze, hence the frost-bitten skin. But there was something else amiss about him. Moxie didn't feel comfortable touching the corpse, but she couldn't understand the flesh wounds the pock-marked this guard's body. As she puzzled over them, her peripheral vision kicked in and she noticed that there seemed to have been an increase in the number of Peacekeepers on the perimeter. Before, she might have been able to see between them from where she had made her lookout point near the canyon; now, though, there were no gaps between each Peacekeeper. Their numbers had dramatically multiplied. Even more obvious up close – they were all wearing _similar_ colors, but not the same colors and definitely not uniforms. If she had to guess, Moxie would have said that less than a third of the Peacekeepers on guard wore uniforms while the others wore the sort of clothing you'd expect an average person from District 10 to own….

The bile reached the roof of her mouth at the same moment that this truth seemed to become clear to her. Moxie retched on the back side of the "Peacekeeper" she was examining. She put a trembling finger to the skin of the skeleton and stuck it into one of the holes. The clothing that had covered this figure had managed to keep the body warm enough so that Moxie could feel inside the wound, but it was not warm enough to plunge her investigative finger too deep inside. She discovered she didn't need to plow the depths of the corpse's wound to find her answer: something metallic pushed back on her finger, biting her skin in the cold and threatening to take off little pieces of it if she chose to tarry long within the cavity. All this confirmed the horrifying truth and Moxie withdrew her finger, doubling over and retching the remaining contents of her stomach. Dizzy from the realization and the effort of being sick, Moxie straightened slowly and stared around the perimeter in horror: were all these extra Peacekeepers actually the corpses of Prairie Dogs?

 _What about Lenox? Striker? Elka? Sissy? Bess? Are they here too? Have I survived some horrible event just to return and find all those persons I love to be dead right in front of me?_ She moved automatically, without any control over herself, to the next figure: it looked to be a woman (the chest was developed like a woman's chest). She moved on to the next: perhaps a teenage boy, all skin and bones because the "uniform" he wore looked too big for his frame, the shoulders not big enough for the coat draped around them, the neck not thick enough to support a head big enough for the helmet upon it. The next: a child…. It was a _child_! Moxie willed the tears away, though she was chilled to the deepest marrow of her bones. The next: an _actual_ Peacekeeper. It went on like this, round the perimeter, with an actual Peacekeeper marking every nine corpses. When she had gotten to the fourth actual Peacekeeper in the circle, Moxie felt a numbness over her that signified a psychological disconnection from her emotional response to what she was seeing. This was truly the most horrifying spectacle she had ever seen. _If it's like this out here, what is it like at the Ranches?_ She found herself wondering, Deane's brother close in mind. Another horrifying thought came to mind: _maybe there's still hope._ At this very moment, hope was the last thing Moxie wanted; how could _hope_ for Bess, Sissy, Elka, Striker and Lenox's survival siphon the prosaic reality before her? _Who_ could be _heartless_ enough to _hope_ after seeing this?

 _It's all Deane's fault_ , she thought. _If_ he _hadn't come to the Compound, none of this would have happened._

She heard the footfalls again, and this time she was prepared to fight whoever pursued her. If it was Deane, she'd knock him out and march him right up to the Mayor's door herself. He'd lost her _everything_ and had he given her anything in return?

 _Yes. He held you at night. He kept you warm. He was company. He was a reminder that Bess knows best._ Moxie frowned at her own thoughts. She hated them. Deane was good for only one thing now: a ransom fee. The footfalls were far greater in number as Moxie heard them. It wasn't one or two folks now; it sounded like at least ten. She would fight them to her own destruction if it took that; she shimmied toward the nearest Peacekeeper corpse and tried to prise the weapon from his frozen fingers. Instead, she managed to snap his fingers, breaking them from his hand completely. The weapon was hers, nonetheless, and she was ready to use it, though she didn't know how. The wind came on strongly again, and this time it was low to the ground and picked up snowdrifts, blowing them up into the air dramatically, creating a semi-transparent curtain of white and grey between Moxie and her pursuers. _Come on then,_ Moxie invited the Fates to toy with her, and in some sense They obliged. As the curtain of snow began to fall, dark, heavily laden figures materialized from behind it. It was like something out of the Hunger Games themselves – a large pack of Careers emerging from hiding to descend upon a seemingly defenceless soon-to-be-dead Tribute. Moxie clenched her jaw, prepared to take down as many as she could. But she was not fast enough. Behind her, a horse and rider appeared so quickly that Moxie had time enough to turn around and lift an arm to received the fatal blow before she was knocked to the ground and had the wind knocked from her.

Lying on the frozen earth, Moxie waited for death. She was ready to join her fellow neighbors, some of whom had been friends, and to become in death a scarecrow dressed like a Peacekeeper – _how_ a pro pos _considering that is_ all _the Peacekeepers are_ , she thought as she gasped for breath that was not forthcoming. Truthfully, it wouldn't have mattered if she'd regained any, for the horse and rider circled her and stopped, the rider climbing down from his steed and crouching over Moxie. His face was mostly covered with a bandana that reminded Moxie of Miss Vetta's stock of bandanas – kept for recreational use as well as tools for her healing trade – and only his glassy blue eyes showed over it. Moxie knew those eyes, but she doubted her instincts, especially given the nature of her attacker's relationship with her in this moment, and she decided that he could be anyone; blue eyes weren't unique in this district. But then he reached out a gloved hand and stroked her cheek, gently, _lovingly_. His hand moved down her throat and slipped under her tunic, pulling from beneath it the locket she wore. They were both focused on it the minute he drew it out. He looked at her, and she looked at him: it seemed like he was deciding what to do with her and the locket, or maybe just with one or the other, and Moxie used that pause to kick at him. At least her efforts threw him off, but he was quick to regain his balance and he knelt on her legs as he grabbed her wrists aggressively and bound them with a bit of leather thong he pulled from under his heavy fur coat. He wrapped an arm around Moxie's waist and flipped her over on the ground, binding her ankles as well. Then he lifted her up and slung her over his shoulder. She was squirming relentlessly, but his grip was strong and his movements, powerful. It was then that Moxie thought to scream and when she did, he slung her from his back to the saddle of the horse, knocking the wind from her again. Untying his bandana, he twisted it into a cord and gagged Moxie's mouth with it, tying it tightly behind her head. She had a chance to look at him without the bandana, and her screams died… because, she knew that face too well… she'd looked up at it all her growing years. Her pursuers were not Peacekeepers or cowboys; they were something else entirely, something that Moxie had always been close to but had never actually experienced: they put clothes on Prairie Dog backs, scraps of food on Prairie Dog tables; they produced instruments that were passed around the campfires at the Compound on hot summer evenings, and they graced every curve of the Compound and all peripheries of Prairie Dog life since Moxie was little. On the tip of her tongue, she knew what they were but she couldn't think of a title for their tribe: they weren't Townies, they weren't cow-men or cowboys, they weren't Peacekeepers or Prairie Dogs; they might be Wild Folk if they weren't from _inside_ the district; and yet, they were all these things too. And the leader of _this_ pack she had known forever, because – after all – the man who had lovingly stroked her cheek and in the same moment gagged and bound her, throwing her onto a thoroughbred horse from the Ranches, this man was none other than her father, Drake Tyler. He withdrew a small bottle of sweet scented herbs and uncorked it, wafting the scent directly up Moxie's nostrils. Sleep found her, gently.

Footsteps; Moxie waited anxiously for Deane to return from the meeting. All that had happened since she realized it was Dad who had taken her and drugged her to sleep, all that she had learned about the fate of the Prairie Dogs on the Compound, all of it was too overwhelming, and the effects of it were settling on her now. Her words came back to her from the beginning of this ill-fated journey, words she'd said to Bess (perhaps the last she'd said to her sister, who knew?): _He's not from our world, Bess._ The world she'd stumbled into, the world her father occupied when he wasn't with them on the Compound, was a world she'd never known to exist before, even though it had always been there at the back of her mind. Now she was a part of it. Did that mean she was still a part of the world she'd grown up in, the world of her sisters and brothers? Or had that world vanished the minute she left it to create a world – very much between all the others – with Deane? Who was she now if she had no clear world to exist in? She played with the locket around her neck. Her fingers had practiced opening and closing the trinket many times out in the canyon. Deane hadn't known about it, she believed; it was something she kept to herself. It was the only totem from a world that she had known and lived in, that she had left and could never return to. _This is all wrong_.

She flicked open the chambers of the locket and lifted them up to her face, staring at the children in the pictures kept safe beneath those doors, appropriately now immortalized in the chambers of her heart, lest they live and breathe there only. What had her mother been like? What had her desires been when she'd met and fallen in love with their father? Had she planned a life like the one that had unrolled before them? Moxie couldn't remember the world in which her mother and she had lived; it was long enough ago that she had some recollection of quick moments, but none of them were of a woman and a man, just her mother and her father. She found that these were severely lacking in information: she wanted to know more. How had it felt to depend on only one person? How had she made the decision to leave her family and cling to a man like Drake Tyler? How did they meet? How did it feel the first time they'd seen each other? She could only vaguely remember times when her Mom and her Dad had been together with them, but the one memory that overwhelmed the others was her last memory of Mom, giving birth to her brothers while sacrificing her own life for theirs. What sort of woman was she that she would make that kind of choice? Moxie didn't know, because she wouldn't have made it. Who would _want_ to bring children into this world, knowing that they'd probably die between the ages of eleven and eighteen (if they were lucky to live through their first three winters, of course)? She'd steered her own life in the direction of the life she thought her Dad led, and she'd never considered asking questions about her Mom's life, but now that she had stepped into Dad's _real_ world and seen it for its horrors, she wanted to know her mother better. Of course, it was too late: that world died almost six years ago, and Moxie had lost the chance… had lost the _right_ to ask about it.

Had Dad always been like this? Moxie couldn't wrap her head around what her mother had seen in her father if he had always been this way. Before she had known it was him who was pursuing her, Moxie had thought him to be a heartless criminal… or Deane… and when he'd revealed himself to her, it had completely changed her understanding of everything foundational in her life. She had probably lost Bess, Sissy, Elka, Lenox and Striker, and now she _knew_ she'd lost her Dad. She did _not_ know this man. So, who _did_ she have on her side now? Miss Vetta? No, because she was in the Town and probably didn't know what was happening out here, or was not able to come for her. She didn't have Miss Vetta. She hadn't made friends with anyone from school, but she'd had Mrs. Bulmer for a brief moment that next to last day she remembered being in school. That equation they'd configured, a lot of it still confused her, but the result seemed pretty clear: the number of the Districts was greater than the number of the Capitol. In order to get the Capitol firmly on one side, alone, you had to subtract the Districts. _They slaughtered children on the Compound. They left anyone who was still alive to die slowly and painfully. How can the number of the Districts be greater than the number of the Capitol?_ They all knew about the Treaty of Treason, the inception of the Hunger Games, the blood debt they had to pay: they all knew that. Was _that_ the number of the Capitol? Was _that_ the number of the Districts? All that learning seemed empty of meaning to Moxie, sitting here waiting for Deane to come back to her. He'd been gone a long time now, and she wasn't tired. She figured she couldn't rely on Mrs. Bulmer being on her side, if she ever crossed paths with her teacher again. She didn't have Mrs. Bulmer.

 _Deane. He's all I have now._ Moxie stroked the pictures of her and her sisters, and of her brothers, locked in the chamber of her heart and yet devoid of their parents. Perhaps that was the way to move forward: without Dad. What had Mom seen in him? _Deane_ , she thought and felt anxious all over again. _What's keeping him so long?_ Now that she was coming around to it, she had Deane, for sure, because she'd pushed him away many times, but he'd never left. She'd become so accustomed to him that she didn't push anymore, except for when she needed to venture away to the Compound, and even now, with perfect vision in looking back, she smiled at the thought that maybe Deane had already known what she would find at the Compound, and he'd used that knowledge somehow to delay her from finding it out. So maybe the stubborn one among them was _her_ , and the constant one was _him_. She'd needed his constancy in the last two months, just to keep her sane. She'd never questioned that he had that power on her, but she'd never taken him for smart except in the beginning when he showed her how to track time based on shadow lengths, but then she'd not known him very well because that basic knowledge seemed like intelligence. He wasn't smart, but he was, perhaps, kind and definitely constant, stable. If things had not gone like they did, she wouldn't have minded returning to the canyon and staying with him there. They could have done it, too.

Deane was asleep when Manu brought him into the shelter. After he was laid down on his bed, and after Manu left, Moxie tiptoed to his side and watched him sleep. He was frowning even in repose. She wanted to touch him to be certain he was real, and she wanted to smooth the creases in his skin, to turn the corners of his mouth up into a smile. Instead, she just stood there and watched him. This was not the same boy who'd threatened to have her killed in the Hunger Games; that boy had vanished when that world had been destroyed. Somehow, though, she knew that _this_ boy had helped her destroy it. It wasn't his fault what happened at the Compound; all worlds had to come to an end at some point, and maybe it was time for the world of the Compound to expire. When the Fates chose a time for something to begin and something to end, it was irrevocable. No door closed without a window being left open, though: Moxie thought she was looking at that window, sleeping before her. Even if their world had come to a close, Deane was still here with her, and there seemed to be no reason why that should have happened, which had to mean that it was part of some other plan she had no knowledge of but was definitely a player in. Her anxiety evaporated: Deane was on her side; she could go on. Dad intruded into her new world, quickly coming through the flap door and closing it again. He had to have seen her even though he paid no attention. He drew up beside Moxie and assumed a similar gaze upon the boy. Moxie side stepped away from him.

"Moxie," Drake said, softly.

"I don't know what to call you," Moxie replied.

"Call me Dad."

"Is that what you are?"

"Of course. It is who I've _always_ been, Moxie," Drake replied.

"I don't know," Moxie challenged him. "I don't know what you are."

"I'm your father."

"I don't think I have a father anymore. I think he died the night Deane came to the Compound. I think he died and someone else took his place." Moxie felt her heart sink. These were hard words to share with the man beside her. They were truth, but she didn't feel like they were _full_ truth.

"He never died," Drake said quietly. Moxie waited for more, _hoped_ for more, but she was given _nothing_ more. Disappointed, she turned around and went back to her bed. "You kept the locket." Drake said to her back. "You know he's not dead."

"He's not there, and he's not here either," she responded, climbing onto the tabletop and pulling the blankets around her. "Mom's not even there. It's just my brothers and sisters."

"Moxie, don't give up on him."

"On _him_? What's there to give up on? I don't _know_ him." Drake covered the distance between them in two long strides and seemed to fall to his knees at her tableside.

" _Moxie_! You _do_ know him. He's changed but he's right here, still trying to keep you safe."

"I don't know," Moxie began, the familiar feeling of stones filling her insides and choking her throat. "All I see is a man who kidnaps children and lets Peacekeepers slaughter his own people."

"I didn't know that was the plan. Something went awfully wrong, and like it or not, your boy there is at the center of it all."

"Deane's been the most stable man in my life these last two months. Don't you tell me he's to blame for this."

"You can spin it however you want, Moxie, but Deane is not someone you should connect yourself to. He's trouble."

"He's all I have." Moxie spat. A strange silence fell, and in it Drake got to his feet and sat down on the corner of Moxie's resting table. He slouched over like he was carrying the world on his shoulders.

"I think you need to let him go." Moxie didn't want to hear more of what he had to say. She turned over, he back to Drake Tyler and eventually he left.

Deane was sitting on the edge of her table when Moxie woke. He smiled at her, a quick and hapless smile, and handed her some food. It was toast with a small egg and scant butter. Regardless of the portion size, it was good.

"What took so long?" She asked between bites. Deane shook his head. She knew that to mean, _Eat first. Then we'll talk._ So she ate, and a few minutes later, she asked again.

"The meeting was about what to do. There are many tribes here at this camp: too many. They need to go their ways. They need to decide what ways to go and when and where to meet up again. Some are going to follow the bison beyond the fence. Some are staying here and waiting for the spring. Some are going to other parts of District 10, but their purpose is unclear." He paused, looked gravely at Moxie, and then continued. " _Was_ unclear. It's been made more clear to me while you were sleeping. You see, that man who took me away last night, he came to wake me up this morning. He said that there is a group of wanderers working to keep folks in 10 alive. Why they are doing this is a big matter, but it is a lifestyle choice and it's a dangerous one." He sighed again. "They make raids on places like the Ranches and take whatever is in excess, and then they go and give it to those who need it most. They do it for the good of all of District 10."

"Deane," Moxie interrupted him, her sense of anxiety growing. "Why all the detail?"

"You never told me you recognized Drake as your father," Deane replied but not in an accusing way.

"It's complicated. I don't think he's my father anymore."

"Don't be stupid, Mox. He's _always_ going to be your father, no matter what else he is."

"Deane, answer me."

"Why all the detail? Because," he scratched the back of his neck, nervously. Moxie could feel what was coming next, but she didn't want him to say it. Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes. "Because he's told me to join them."

"Do you have _any_ choice?" Moxie said, frustrated. She wiped her eyes clean of tears, angrily. Deane took her hands in his and gave them a squeeze.

"He said it is up to me to decide. And I'm saying it's up to me _and you_ to decide, because I won't go if you don't want me to go." He blushed. "I mean…" Moxie squeezed his hands.

"I know what you mean. We're a team." He looked at her long and hard, and while he did, Moxie knew what the answer was: even if they decided he shouldn't go with the wanderers, Drake would find a way to keep them parted. Maybe he would even do it himself. Moxie found him to be completely unpredictable. But she also knew that Deane couldn't stay here because, if he was suggesting that there would be an assault on the camp when the weather was better, he would definitely be found and probably killed. She didn't want to let him go beyond the fence because she didn't know anything about the Wild Folk out there, and who knew what else was out there? It seemed there was danger everywhere now, and that meant his path would always have death walking it with him, probably closer at some times than others. If the wanderers were skilled at raiding and getting away without being caught, then that was a group she would rather have Deane a part of. Of course, he was the other half of this equation. Between them, they knew, their numbers were equal, not lopsided. So she offered him a reassuring smile, realizing some of her old self was returning: she'd keep brave for them both while he was away, and if he came back to the camp, she'd be there waiting for him. It was probably the same way her mother had lived… Moxie wiped the thought clear.

"Well," Deane sighed. "They'll want an answer soon. The wanderers are leaving before midday, and there's talk of a storm on the horizon. The Wild Folk are leaving as soon as I make a decision. So…?"

"I think you should go with the wanderers," Moxie said, trying to be strong but noticing her throat was closing. "I think they will be able to keep you safe, and their cause sounds like a good one, even if it sounds very dangerous and risky. I would rest better knowing you're with professionals rather than Wild Folk." She nodded but she could see in his eyes a sense of sadness. He sighed and looked away at the flap door.

"Or I could stay with you."

"It wouldn't be with me, Deane," Moxie said, fighting her own sadness. "Some way or another, they'd separate us. I don't know why or how but it would happen. And if there was a raid from the Peacekeepers on this settlement, you'd be caught, either captured and taken away or killed and _forever_ taken away." _And I could never let that happen_.

"But we'd keep each other safe, like we always have." Deane protested, but he knew it was futile.

"We can keep each other safe like this," Moxie said, tears beginning to fall. "I think you _have_ to go. I don't think they'd let you stay."

"Yeah," Deane sighed heavily. "I didn't think so either." He looked down for a long pause and then briefly caught her eyes, turning away at last. "I should go tell them." He got up after another momentary pause, strode slowly to the flap door, still limping slightly, and paused at the entrance. He unfastened the flap, drew it back, paused as if he was going to say something to Moxie – which she waited for with baited breath – and then shook his head and left, the flap falling behind him. Moxie listened to his footsteps until they died. And then, she stopped fighting and let herself be consumed by an overwhelming grief. She'd had Deane, and now she'd let him go. She had nobody in this world. No one. Perhaps it was time to leave this world and try to salvage one more familiar to her. Perhaps, she thought, but not today. Today I just want to mourn.


	30. Chapter 28: Atoka Menzies

_**CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:**_

Atoka Menzies

"Not so long ago, it seems, Momma took me out to this place. It was a big open field back then… no one had built all of this," Atoka said to the little girl in front of her. She felt her stomach, running a hand over it, trying to find the life growing inside her. Giving her up… because Atoka had decided it was a girl… was going to be the worst challenge of her life. She was a Victor of the Hunger Games with so much blood on her hands; she wanted to quit the business of blood-letting and take an occupation that was life-giving. This child, this _girl_ , was the key to open that door. "Maybe, I'll call her Ceridwyn like my Momma." She told the girl in front of her. "She took me here a long time ago. Or maybe it wasn't that long ago, it just seems like it was a long time ago." Atoka sighed and looked down at the girl, whose expression was fixed as if frozen. "I'll call her Ceridwyn," she decided and left their conversation there.

Jesse was waiting for her when she walked in the door. His boots were lined against the wall just inside the swing of the door. He met her in the entry hallway and brought her to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair for her and sitting her down. Putting on an apron, the cowboy returned to the stovetop and flipped the flapjacks in the frying pan. His movements were smooth because he'd been doing this for a couple of weeks now. Despite this, Atoka thought he looked out of place for a cowboy: the apron was comical. He used to blush when she'd laugh, but now he just smiled at her, depositing a stack of pancakes onto a plate and pushing it in front of her. From another pan, he scooped out a helping of hashed browns and deposited them onto her plate as well. She made a face. "I can't eat all this, Jesse." The cowboy shrugged and forked a few hashed browns off the plate into his mouth. "I _still_ can't eat all of this." Atoka said as he turned around and moved away to turn off the stovetop. He returned to her and took a seat.

"Where were you today?" Jesse asked. Atoka dug into the food.

"Same as always."

"Why do you go there?" He asked, wrinkling his forehead.

"Momma used to go up there with me when it was a field." Atoka said through mouthfuls.

"What are you talking about?" Jesse's brow furrowed more. "It's never been a field. It's always just been… you know… the Compound." Atoka glared at him, and Jesse backed away. "Okay, when was it just a field?"

"I don't remember exactly when, but I was young."

"And there were no buildings at all?"

"None. Maybe one. Maybe two."

Jesse looked nowhere for a moment, making Atoka think he was lost in some sort of deep thought or memory. But he snapped back to her. "Who went to live there first?"

"I suppose someone knows, but not me." She forked some hash browns into her mouth and thought hard if Momma had ever told her anything about them.

"They" were the Townies who had their reasons for leaving. It was when the Dark Days had fallen on them. Even though the Mayor Steward had offered a surrender to the Capitol forces at the beginning of the Rebellion, when stocks and supplies had been cut off from them, they'd become a hunting ground for angry or frustrated District 2 soldiers. First it was just the livestock, but later they began hunting people as well. Children couldn't run too fast so they were easy pickings. It became a game. That's when the folks who couldn't stand the Town moved out. Pretty soon after, the raids began and District 2 lost a lot of occupying soldiers. When the Capitol came in to polish off their victory, the corpses were propped up like scarecrows in the town square. Yes, some of the Townies moved out to what became the Compound, and yes folks in the Town knew they were behind the raids. Some gave them up, but most didn't. What followed emphasized the darkness of the Dark Days, and Atoka couldn't remember much more about it because they all became so used to being occupied – if not by District 2 then by the Capitol – and house raids were common. She did remember moving though. It took them away from the main action, and for that Atoka supposed she was grateful. Treatment was largely egalitarian though, and no one was treated well. Eventually, they all turned on each other, forcing a permanent Capitol presence in the Town and around it: they might have been the catalyst for Peacekeepers.

"We moved, not out there but away from Town," Atoka said. "Where were you?"

Jesse shrugged. "I've always been a rancher. I suppose I was on the ranch. Things there were different too, but they haven't changed as much as elsewhere in this part of 10." He helped himself to a few more hashed browns off her plate. "I don't know," he said as if it was the answer to a question. "I remember the drills we had to practice if we saw soldiers on the grounds. We had to stop and get down under a table or something, count to three and then crab-walk to the nearest closet or closed space, count to three and then open it and get inside. We had to wait until it was clear." He shook his head. "Sometimes it was all night until someone signaled. It wasn't easy but we survived. But the cow-men took a big hit. I think we lost most of them in raids and other assaults. It's lucky folks don't know what happened on the ranches because it was terrible."

"When did you start working with Mrs. Dickson?" Atoka asked. She was calculating what the personal cost would be when she became the assassin President Snow was shaping her into; it wasn't her favorite game to play.

"My cow-man was killed in the last raid: Mr. Farnsworth took in all those on my ranch, and he took the land, I think." Atoka studied him.

"How did he die?"

"Can't say. Didn't wake up one morning."

"Oh," Atoka said. "That's a nice way to go."

"We buried him eight days after he was found. I don't know why." Jesse began. "And his tongue, it was swelled up and pushing his mouth open. Inside his mouth was all black like smoke and ash staining, and the pallor of his face was splotchy." He looked at Atoka. "It means he was poisoned. So…" he shrugged. "Not so much a nice way to go after all."

 _Poison_ : Atoka made the mental note.

"What is _your_ name?" Atoka asked the little girl. Her conversation partner was still looking out toward the open plains, her gaze fixed. "Mine _was_ Atoka Menzies. Pretty soon it'll be Atoka Lee. I guess Cor needs to ask me first, but I think he knows I'll say yes. It's his daughter I'm carrying anyway." She touched her womb. "I can't remember growing up. Can you?" The girl didn't say anything. Atoka nodded. "Yeah, I guess you're still growing, aren't you?" The girl didn't say anything; she just stared off into the distance. Atoka stayed a little longer and then went back home near sunset.

"Why would anyone want to bring a child into this place?" She was testy when she got back and found Jesse on her doorstep. He looked like he'd been caught off guard, stumbling as he was taking his boots off.

"What's wrong, Ms. Menzies?"

"What's _right_? Why bring a child into this place?" She spat at him as she pushed by and into the house without removing her shoes. He followed closely behind her.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh gees, Jesse! What do you _think_ I mean?" She spun on him with ire.

"I… I don't know. That's why I asked." He said bashfully.

"This place is no place for new life." She left him in the kitchen and made sure to slam her door behind her. Eventually, she heard him leave.

She found plates of food premade for her and wrapped in the refrigerator. She wanted to ignore them but all her decisions were made for her now that she had another life in her. It all seemed too strange that she should have life in her when all she'd ever been was an angel of death. To have a mother like that – one who only knew death – Atoka couldn't imagine how a child would live. She wasn't sure how she could live for her child either: she'd been bought at a dear price. How many had to die for her to get her happy ending (not that she believed in those)? She grabbed a plate and marched out of the house. Maybe her conversation partner had more to say this evening.

Overhead, the sky was covered by clouds, thick and impenetrable. Just beneath them, a wind picked up carrying colder temperatures on them. The world was already cold; now it promised to be colder still. Atoka didn't seem to notice as she carried her plate of food out through the Victor's Village, across the Ranches and through the Reserve. She found her friend still staring out into the plains, just as she'd left her. Atoka made a seat for herself and handed some food to the girl. It wasn't enough to break that icy stare so Atoka put some into her hand and began eating her own share. Jesse had really improved as a cook, though when he'd gotten time to learn at all was a mystery to Atoka. Often, she hadn't realized she was hungry until she began eating. Now, as she sat with her reticent little friend, she appreciated his efforts almost enough to feel disappointed in herself for being rough with him earlier.

"What are you looking at out there?" she asked her friend without looking at her. Dusk was coming in like a high tide. Above the clouds it seemed that there was no sun to set anyway, but as Atoka waited for an answer from her friend, a tear in the fabric of cloud cover lit magically as the sun slipped through and shone a single slanting ray down to the ground. It caught Atoka's attention. "Oh," she said as if it was an answer from the little girl beside her. As Atoka watched the ray disappear slowly, something moved beneath it. The clouds seemed to zipper up, hiding the sun behind them and Atoka realized that, indeed, there was a figure moving toward her. Before the cover of dusk fell, the teenage girl was there. She said nothing but looked at Atoka's conversation partner, and then she frowned at Atoka.

"What the Hell are you doing out here, Miss Menzies?" The girl said.

"Eating," Atoka said. "Isn't that right?" She was talking to her little girl friend. Like always, she said nothing but merely stared out from where the teen girl had come.

"Who the Hell are you talking to?" Atoka pointed up at her friend, and that made the teen girl laugh. "You _are_ crazy." She took a seat, still laughing. Atoka moved away from the girl and continued to eat. She knew she was eating for her daughter now because she wasn't hungry after the first few bites. The plate of food sat between them. The teen girl continued to laugh, but she was looking at the plate with the same sort of expression Atoka had seen on many other children of District 10. Some of those expressions had also been carried from other Districts into the arena where so many went to die. Death was a lucrative business; hunger was its harbinger. Atoka pulled the plate closer to her and shot the laughing girl a look: _not yours_. The girl's laughter changed tone, but she didn't stop laughing. She _did_ look away. "Oh man, District 10's lone hero is a crazy woman talking to a dead girl." She said between laughs, shaking her head. "Not to mention, a bitch." Atoka shrugged. She'd kill the girl later.

"Who are you?" Atoka asked, not really caring.

"You've met me before. Of course you don't remember." Atoka looked over at the girl and thought she could see something familiar about her. She decided she was making it up and gave up. "Moxie Tyler," the girl said, finally.

After that meeting, Atoka was careful not to return to the Compound. It was a decision she made based on their parting; Moxie Tyler, a girl she did remember seeing once long ago, stayed in the Compound which meant that Atoka wanted nothing to do with the place. She discovered that staying home was suffocating, though, and with her food prepared for her, Jesse's visits had stopped, leaving her with a lot of time to herself. She decided to go back three days later, toughen up. Partially, she wanted to know more about this Tyler girl; it was a surname she had a vague memory of from times she'd forgotten too soon. Taking the last plate of food with her, Atoka made the trek back out to the Compound: the clouds were still thick above, this time with the promise of snow. As she approached the Compound, she saw how it had changed. The rubble from the hovels had been cleared away and in one large hovel there was smoke rising from a hole dug into the earthen roof. Atoka made her way over to that hovel, passing by her silent friend staring out into oblivion through dead eyes. It was no wonder she was frozen solid.

Moxie was sitting at a broken table inside the hovel when Atoka knocked once on the tin door outside it and entered. They looked at each other a moment before Atoka held up the plate of food like a peace offering. Moxie sighed and looked away. Atoka took the remaining seat opposite the Tyler girl, putting the plate down. "She's dead," she said, unwrapping the plate of food and pushing it, this time, toward Moxie. "I knew that. I needed someone to talk to." Moxie looked at her a moment, smirked and took some food off the plate, putting it in her mouth. "And I am crazy, you're right. I'm not a hero."

"Me either," Moxie said. "Me either."

"What is this place?" Atoka asked, taking some food for herself.

"Home. I've come home."

"You _lived_ here?" Atoka asked, looking around at the small room standing entrance before a second room shrouded in darkness and partially covered with a curtain in disrepair.

"Yeah," Moxie said, sounding annoyed. "I _grew up_ here."

"What was that like?" Atoka asked, all other topics suspended for her.

"What… growing up? Or growing up _here_?"

"Well, both." Atoka said.

"It was easier when it was filled with my sisters and brothers. All of life is hard though, unless you're a Victor." Atoka shook her head.

"No. Even then, life is hard."

"I can't imagine," Moxie said sarcastically.

"No you can't."

"Well what's so hard about it?"

"Every day. Every day you live, you relive death." Atoka said, fighting off her own recollections. "There isn't anywhere you can turn without looking at Death. It's a reality." She trailed off and fell quiet.

"I think that's true for us all, now." Moxie took more food and continued to eat, but the silence between them was no longer ice cold or uncomfortable. Atoka found some familiarity in the Tyler girl's silence. "What happened here?" Moxie finally said so softly Atoka couldn't hear her.

"What?"

"I said, what happened here?" Moxie repeated louder.

"No idea. I was in the Capitol." Atoka replied.

"What's that like?" Moxie asked, but her tone suggested she didn't care, so Atoka didn't answer.

"I remember," Atoka said instead, several minutes later. "There were a few buildings here before. This was one of them."

"Sorry? What are you talking about?" Moxie asked.

"Before. Momma used to take me here. Before it was the Compound and you all were Prairie Dogs."

"There _was_ no _Before_ ," Moxie said sharply.

" _Of course_ there was a _Before_ , you just weren't around for it. How old are you anyway?"

"Thirteen now," Moxie said.

"Gees, I was just a couple years older than you when I went into the arena. What are your odds of going, girl?"

"In my favor," Moxie said, but she didn't sound certain.

"I guess it doesn't much matter anyway since it looks like all your kin were tacked up to those posts out there, frozen, shot, frozen again."

"When has it ever mattered?" Moxie asked, expressing to Atoka a sense of grim resolve that death was coming for her eventually.

"What was it like growing up here?" Atoka asked suddenly. "Was any part of it happy?"

"Sure. We had each other throughout it, which I guess kept everyone going. I had to run most of the household, especially when Dad was away."

"Didn't you have a momma?" Atoka asked, interrupting her.

"For a little while, but I don't remember her." Moxie pulled at something around her neck and brought out a trinket from beneath her clothing, attached to a chain fastened about her person. She showed the little thing to Atoka. It was in the form of a heart and seemed to be hollow until Moxie flicked a little knob and the heart opened, revealing its secrets inside. Atoka looked longingly at the children's photos inside. She felt her womb and wished for a sign of life, a kick or something like it. "Dad gave this to me during the Games this year. He said it was my momma's. It's all I have of her now, not that I'm sentimental or anything; but having a piece of her is better than nothing at all." She stuffed the trinket back down her clothing and resumed picking at Atoka's plate of food.

"I think you were happy here," Atoka said at last. "I think you were."

After dinner, Moxie showed Atoka around the hovel and as the snow began to fall at sunset, she offered Atoka a place to sleep for the night. Eventually Atoka pulled the mattress out of the bedroom and set it in front of the fire where Moxie had set up a place to sleep. They spoke a little more, but not about childhood or growing up. They spoke, instead, about changes, about dignity and about how to resurrect a place with so many bad memories that no one dared come near it. That place was all around them, the Compound, and their plan for attack was to take down all the slain women, children, men and boys, and Peacekeepers. Without the dead guarding their living space, maybe… just maybe those who had fled would find a way to return.


	31. Chapter 29: The Deep End

_**CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:**_

The Deep End

 _Drake Tyler_

What I didn't anticipate was the swift reply I got from the boy. I was wary of him, obviously, but I was also expectant: expectant that he would refuse to come with me and the Wanderers, knowing that many of them were Wild Folk or cross-breeds of Wild Folk and Trappers. When he came into my tepee, though, he was adamant. _I'll go._ I've seen such certainty in the likes of Wild Folk, of Trappers and of Rebels, but in a Ranch Hand (or perhaps more appropriately a Fugitive) I've never seen such a spark. He reminded me of myself, and that made me even more edgy. Who truly enjoys seeing themselves in someone else? I sized him up, hoping he'd flinch and be proved unworthy of a place among the Wanderers, but he sized me up with an expression void of emotion. In my understanding of folks out here and around this District, such an expression means that either the person feels _too_ much to communicate any one emotion clearly, _or_ they are feeling _nothing_. The latter is risky because apathy is the forerunner of ruthlessness; the former is risky because passion is the forerunner of irrationality. Finally, I nodded, and he left.

He did not sit with us as we took our final meal at the camp. Delayed by an onset of overcast skies, hiding our precious navigational stars from view, we had convened a Wanderer's council to discuss many details concerning the forthcoming campaign. Deane had not been invited on my orders. By that time, the Wanderers knew he would be coming with us, but as was typical of them, no one made any attempts to approach him and make connections with him. They would size him up themselves, evaluate his usefulness to the group and decide where to slot him in when the raids began. If he wasn't deemed very useful, he'd be in the vanguard until he was disposed of; part of me wondered if that was the fate of this boy. Iffy was quite clear in her message to me: _This Boy Must Live_. What she wasn't clear on was for how long he must live. Before the Wanderer's council, I didn't feel any need to serve as a guide or guardian of the boy; I didn't really know if I liked him yet. That was the attitude I brought into the council.

The council was small: to my right was a man called Gurner – he was Wild Folk from the nation of the Diney, an expert hunter and tracker but also an unpredictable temperament; beside him was the reticent Alban (of the nation of the White Folk) sharpshooter, Carson – we called him Hawkeye; beside him and directly across from me, Joizi – an expert trader and barterer from the Pigeon Folk, those who are of mixed blood with the Wild Folk nations; and beside him was a good friend for many years, a man who's name we were never certain of but who we called Letherman – an expert watchman of the naturally observant and watchful Quinchey nation of the Wild Folk, but also a man of advanced age who's greatest asset was to lift morale through his colorful stories. Being a wizened man, Letherman was on the council because he had seen many raids and had been like a magic man in the most difficult campaigns, lifting the morale of our camp with stories of the heroes of old. Without ever picking up a weapon, Letherman had saved just about every man and woman in the Wanderers at least once; he'd seen me through the ranks before the Alban nation had any significant representation among the Wanderers. The Wanderer occupying the seat to my left was a woman called Mika; she was of the Diney nation, a scout and huntress. Unlike Carson's reticence, Mika's stoic personality contained something very deep inside that made everyone who looked at her fall silent. She was fierce both during raids and while in the camp, choosing her words carefully and saying very few of them. Carson seemed always at odds with her, though their arguments were largely silent.

The Wild Folk and the few Pigeon Folk among us spoke in a different sort of style to the Alban Folk, but I heard it as though we all spoke the same. Even now, as they spoke at council, so well practiced was I at rearranging their words that it came as though we were all the same. As was typical, Letherman initiated proceedings.

"We gather because we must reevaluate our campaign. Carson, Mika, you are both talented scouts with sharp eyes, but this weather has bested you. We cannot proceed blind. Gurner, Drake, you are both highly successful hunters, but the world beyond our world has become more dangerous and less predictable, and we cannot know what lies in store for us on each turn of the road. I urge the council not to press forward until more intelligence is gathered given our conditions so that our hunters and scouts are not led needlessly into harm's den. And of course, Joizi, your skill for negotiation is not forgotten, but without knowledge of our adversaries out there, how can you know what sort of negotiations to propose? Nay, I say. We must convene to decide how to adjust so that we are still in favor with the Wakan Tanka and the Fates, respectively. Let us begin such a decision now."

"We must send scouts in advance of our party," I said immediately after Letherman sat again. "We _need_ to know what awaits us, which road to take. We are now too close to Mills, and with the presence of our two fugitives, we can't risk staying longer than one day at most seeing as the Alban Folk in Mills are already on high alert for unusual activity. We must also spirit away the fugitives. They cannot be anywhere near our camps."

"We can attack Mills and be done with them once and for all," Joizi said when I had taken my seat. "Then they will pose no threat to us."

"That's crazy. We can't defeat the gunpower of the Peacekeepers." Carson interrupts the few members who have jumped to their feet, I being one of them. "Mills is an endgame, not a starting point." He takes his seat voluntarily.

"Why delay the inevitable?" Mika challenges. Letherman shakes his head, but Mika continues. "Mills is a strong position to strike from, especially with their concentration of Peacekeepers there. It is a major artery to the heart of District 10; we need to clot its blood flow to make it a place to draw Capitol forces in and pick them off."

"You are mistaking our purpose," Letherman silences Mika. "It is not to be attackers. We are a band of Wanderers intent on taking the surplus of the greedy and redistributing it to the majority of the needy in this District. Yes, a component of our campaigns is to launch attacks, but it is a small component, and you need not forget that detail, Mika. We raid, but we do not seek to conquer."

"It is all a mistake, then," Mika protests. She doesn't even stand up to speak.

"Attacking Mills is no longer an item for discussion," Letherman says firmly. "I am removing it from this council. You may appeal to have it brought up again at a later time, but for this council, it is inappropriate. We must proceed." He sits and the room falls silent. Joizi and Mika aren't pleased but they press the issue no further.

"We need to revisit Drake's idea of sending scouts," Gurner says to break the silence. "Let us form two small bands of three folks each. We need a tracker or hunter, a scout and a negotiator for each of our bands." No one rises to protest so Gurner carries on. "I propose two leaders, one for each band. I'll be the leader of one; I made this proposal so it is fair. I elect Drake to be the leader of the other band because he made the initial proposal and he is a good guide, though we've put so much on his shoulders already." I nod my thanks. "I elect Mika to be the tracker for my band, which leaves Carson to be the tracker for Drake's band. As to negotiators, I would gladly take Joizi if I could be sure that Drake could find a negotiator for his band." Letherman stands slowly and we all wait for him to rise.

"If this is the way we wish to go, I will join my friend and brother Drake as his negotiator." He takes a little time to sit again, and when he has nestled safely on his bench once more, Gurner concludes the council.

"So, we have two scouting bands. Are there any among us who find fault with this plan of action?" None raise their hands. "I request the conclusion of the council be made. I request that Drake stay behind with me for a short planning session which we will impart on our bands immediately following its conclusion. All out of favor say nay." There are none. Gurner sits.

"The council is concluded." Letherman says from his bench. Everyone around me rises and Carson helps Letherman up. Soon they are gone and Gurner and I remain.

"We should go north," Gurner says in a lower voice. "The herds are moving south so the herders will follow them, and that will draw attention from Mills to the south. With their eyes away from us, we can move freely in the north."

"The news from the north has not been good," I say. "The Albans are burning their fields in defiance of the Peacekeepers, who are returning the favor by executing the offenders. Soon there will be many orphans ripe for picking by the cow-men."

"Then we _must_ go north. Perhaps we can bring some of these orphans into our camps."

"Do you think that's a good idea?" I ask, thinking of the fugitive boy.

"We're on purpose a charity to the needy of District 10. If all goes as you say, there are more needy folk than before. We can choose which camps to assign them to once we have them in our possession, but this is the time, I believe, to capitalize on the viciousness of our enemies, to turn their work against them."

"You are talking rebellion, Gurner," I say sternly. "Have you forgotten how well that went the last time?"

"Okay, but we need to find some way to use a large outpouring of orphans in the north."

"We don't know for certain how many count that is," I remind him.

"Then we should go north." I can't argue with him. "Agreed?" I think it over but there seems to be no other choice. I nod. "Good. We go at first light." As we are concluding, Letherman enters with the fugitive boy. He waits for Gurner to exit before speaking directly to me.

"I am bringing the boy with me to learn the art of negotiation. He has already told me he is joining the Wanderers, and I have seen this as an opportunity to give him a purpose." I glare at Deane.

"Is this true?" Deane nods. "Very well," I say following a heavy, disappointed sigh. "Very well."

 _Velvetta Cordwip_

Mildred Hatch fawns over the boy. She's come for tea and had a surprise when both Elka and Thatcher appear in the kitchen. She likes Thatcher's light hair, saying that it reminds her of rolling straw bales when she was quite young. She has no way of noticing how bruised the boy is beneath the spare set of Drake's clothing I keep in a special drawer in my personal room. He's so skinny that any clothing would hang loose on him, but given Drake's musculature in opposition to Thatcher's leanness, he looks like he's drowning in the cloth. It hides the worst of his bruising and saves Millie from alarm. His facial wounds have healed nicely; Elka is more skilled with this work than I had thought initially. With the wound marks gone from Thatcher's face, his true features have emerged and he is an easy face to look on. Perhaps in my older age, like Millie Hatch, I look at the young men of District 10 and think that they are all winsome.

Elka is still very attentive to Thatcher, forcing him (sometimes) to sit for his treatments. With her aptitude for healing, I am able to carry on with my shop-keeping and business, knowing that Thatcher is in good hands. Of course, the day is coming when I will have to register him as an apprentice under my tutelage. It _does_ make him more susceptible to selection into the next Hunger Games, but I'm keeping that fear to myself; Elka seems to think he is safe. She tells me things, sometimes, that sound crazy if I hadn't known my sister well enough to spot a similarity in her ravings and Elka's. The other day, she told me that the caves weren't real… the caves she'd seen Thatcher and Moxie in… but that the Capitol made them especially for the Games and that if Thatcher didn't move at least four times a day, he'd be killed by the caves before he'd be killed by any other Tribute. She also told me that Moxie isn't going to die in the Games. I think she sounds crazy, and I _choose_ not to heed her statements. It does stick with me, as I watch Millie treating Thatcher like a pet while she has no trouble giving orders to the younger Elka, that Elka didn't say if Thatcher would die in the Games or not. If Moxie and Thatcher are in the Games together, though, and Elka is predicting the truth – that Moxie doesn't perish in them – then that leaves the only option to be that Thatcher dies. I'm glad Elka is still attentive to him then, because if I were left to the task, I wouldn't attend if I knew he was fated to die anyway.

I've become attached to these two children, and I don't mean that in a bad way: they are two personalities that really liven my day. Thatcher has an optimism I find unquenchable, especially after all he has had to endure. He reminds me too much of Bess. Elka treats him carefully but not without her own sense of humor. She's still so young and yet I see the sort of woman she's going to become: she's bound to be exactly like her mother. I've become more attached to her than I was before, perhaps for this very reason – seeing Violet Steward in her. It was just last night that I caught myself thinking about Violet again after so many years. I had closed the shop and the two children were upstairs in their room, my old sewing room, preparing for bed, and I had a moment where I was taken back to a time when Violet was still with us. I don't know why it happened like that, but I remembered seeing Miss Violet Steward sitting on the dusty floor of my Papa's shop, pulling the eyes out of a cloth doll she carried around with her. The eyes were made of pins from a sewing kit, and she wasn't in danger of pricking herself on account of the pins being blunt at their sharp end, but I remember thinking it was odd to see a girl in a frilly pink Sunday dress and bonnet, white socks and booties sprawled out in front of her, pulling out the eyes of her doll. The contrast of her dainty appearance with the crudeness of her activity threw me for a loop. As I got to know of her better, I discovered how much she had to suppress that crudeness as she grew up, the daughter of a well-to-do businessman and his wife, first; eventually, she became something much bigger than that, but I didn't think about her arc through life in that moment of pause last night.

Elka wasn't crude in her manner; only in her appearance did she reflect a sense of wildness. I had always thought she was fragile, being so small and seemingly breakable. My time with her in the last few months had proved me very wrong, and for that I was grateful. I had done her disservice to think she was breakable at all. She took everything that Thatcher threw at her – and sometimes that was a lot – and continued on without much fuss. I got to see her get stern with him once, but she never seemed to be capable of being angered. It was an incredible feat of mastering her emotions in order to keep her productivity up. I have to say, part of me admired her as well.

But then there were the times when she'd have her visions. Those times frightened me. After all, my sister had also had visions and dreams, and she'd been unable to stop herself from sharing them; it got her hunted, captured and killed. In those days most of the executions of the rebels were made public and were mandatory to attend unless those who refused wanted to be considered in collusion with the rebels and wished to be the stars of the next featured execution. With a case like Iffy's, it was more difficult because the folks in Town had been actively looking for her, to turn her in we all thought, and when Drake came to this house that dreadful night so long ago, I had thought he was there for protection. They'd sent him in to root out Iffy and to lead her to her capture once and for all. I should never have forgiven him for that, but then – as always – the roads crisscrossed and paths that should not have intersected were given no other choice but to intersect. Drake's path and Violet Steward's path collided, and much of the division of District 10 was bridged with their wedding.

No, I don't want to recall those days anymore. It's hard not to, if I'm honest, when I look at these two children from very different worlds suddenly brought together in my world – also different from theirs. I can't help seeing their paths colliding like so many others have done before them. Even mine; even my path collided with another person's path unnecessarily, once. But I don't want to think about that these days. Whenever paths have collided in the past, it has been at the doorstep of catastrophe, and while we don't have much more to lose in District 10, the Capitol always seems to find a way to increase our sorrows.

 _Atoka Menzies_

I pulled the mattress out from the dark and dank little room (if it could be called that) in the back of the house (if _it_ could be called _that_ ) and dragged it up to where Moxie was bedding down. She was stoking the fire so her back was to me, but I could sense that she picked up on the noise I was making (which wasn't much, honestly) because her body language changed slightly when I entered her space. She didn't seem surprised to see me when she was finished working the fire. I pulled the mattress up to where she'd constructed her own bedding and sat down on it.

"Why did you say that at supper?" she asked me.

"Say what?" I asked.

"That you think I was happy here."

"Weren't you?"

"Well, yes. And no." she stopped talking and then looked at me quickly. "Actually, I spent a lot of the time wondering how much better _you_ lived."

"Me?" I ask, puzzled.

"Yeah. You are a celebrity, Miss Atoka," she said and I detected a slight falter in her voice, a slight blush come to her cheeks.

"I'm just a girl from District 10," I said, blushing.

"No," she said bluntly. "You're a Victor of the Hunger Games."

"That's not me," I said, self-consciously.

"Who are _you_ then," Moxie asked after a long and painful (for me) pause.

"I'm _going to be_ a mother, maybe. Hopefully a wife too," I began, and that was when Moxie looked up at me with the most inexpressible look of curiosity on her face. "What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "It's just…well…I can't imagine you being married. Maybe its because I don't really understand the point of getting married, or maybe it's because I don't really understand what _getting married_ is, but whatever it is, I can't see you being married." She paused for a second, her mouth forming the words she wanted to say even though no voice was lent to them. "Who?" she asked finally.

"Who am I getting married to?" I asked for clarification.

"Yeah. Is it another Victor?" I shook my head.

"It's a man from the Capitol." Moxie makes a face of disgust, at which I laugh. "Not all of the Capitol folk are bad or ridiculous." Moxie frowns.

"I don't think that's true," she said plainly. I let her believe what she wants, knowing that Cor could probably change her mind if she met him. Maybe she will meet him someday. "I guess it's not just Capitol folk," she said suddenly, out of the silence. "I just don't think people can change." Now, it seems, we are in agreement on something. "They're either good or they're rotten." She continued. "But I think the way we look at each other can change, _does_ change _a lot_. And I think we mistake _that_ changing of _opinions_ as a changing of the _person_. But really, I think, we're only either good or rotten."

"Which do you think you are, Moxie?" I asked, making it a personal conversation. She answers immediately.

"Oh, I'm rotten, no doubt. Folks just look at me and see good. They're blind."

"They _are_ blind," I agreed. "They look at me and see a strong woman who won the Hunger Games by killing 23 other Tributes." Moxie sized me up; I wonder what she is thinking. "The truth: I killed three Tributes and managed to outlive the rest, including Denton."

"But you did kill," she said softly. "That means you played the Games, and you can't win if you don't play, right?"

"I never won," I snapped. "I'm still playing the Games every day." Moxie didn't say anything for a long time after that. I was composed again when she did reply.

"You're not like I thought you would be," she said. "I thought you'd be…actually, I don't know what I thought you'd be. _Better than_ is probably what I thought. Better than District 10 folks; better than us; better than me."

"I just want to be a girl from 10," I said. "I don't want to be a celebrity. I don't want to play the Games anymore. And I _don't want to be a mentor_."

"That must be hard," Moxie said softly. "It's tough to see a boy and girl from 10 die each year from here, but I can't imagine what it's like for you, having to get to _know_ them and _then_ watching them die. That must be hard." I think Moxie and I see each other in a new way.

"I want to do something to make District 10 proud of me, not because the Capitol says they should but because they say they should." I said to her some minutes later when we had both positioned ourselves laying down. "What do you want out of life. Moxie?"

"I don't know anymore," she said. "My family back, I guess. If they're still alive. I have no way of knowing."

"All those scarecrows out there," I said. "They're really all dead Prairie Dogs and Peacekeepers?" Moxie nodded. An idea came to me then. "We should take them down. I can't foresee anyone wanting to return from hiding to a place guarded by the dead. We should take them down."

"What good will that do?" Moxie asked.

"Maybe none, but it will bring back some of the old familiarity of this place so you might begin to see it as it was. Maybe if others are hiding, they might see it as it was and want to come back too."

"Why? Just so the Peacekeepers can come back and finish us off?"

"Well, who says we can't make the Peacekeepers pay for their wickedness?" I said, a second plot hatching in my head. This one, though, was rebellious at nature, and it might break what fragile relationship Moxie and I shared. To my good fortune, though, she nodded.

"They should pay. You're right. I suppose the thing to decide is how."

"Yeah," I agreed. "How. First, we ought to take down the scarecrows. We should do that tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," she repeated, and with a sense of purpose, I think, we both fell quiet and eventually went to sleep.

In the morning, we talked about pushing District 10 into a change for the better, and it was going to begin right here in the Compound. The District 10 of the future, I thought, would be one worth bringing a child into, one worth marrying in; it was a District 10 that stood no longer afraid of its oppressive neighbors to the North. In the morning, I lost my fear of losing Cor; I lost my reservations against killing Mrs. Dickson, I lost my desire to destroy my baby… _Cor's_ and my baby… and I believe I also lost just a small fraction of myself. Perhaps, though, that piece of me I think I lost that morning wasn't there to start. The Capitol never spits you out whole, I guess. They keep on gnawing on you.


	32. Chapter 30: Vetta Cordwip

_**CHAPTER THIRTY:**_

Velvetta Cordwip

Snow, when it fell, didn't stay for long on these plains. Some folks called it a "dusting" because they expected much more than this accumulation, but for citizens of District 10, this amount was just right. It was enough for footprints to be left of such visibility that their owners could be easily tracked by amateur scouts, and yet in the making of such prints, the maker rarely saturated their trousers or stockings. Even though the mountains were far away, their snow-capped peaks were highly visible on a clear morning. Any children rushing to school either by the paved road or many of the unpaved dirt paths could look across the plains in the direction of that magical city called The Capitol, and they would see the white caps resting on the mountaintops like winter hats pulled snug upon a bare head.

Beneath the snow, the ground froze. Long after the snow would have melted, the hardness of the earth would persist; it was a symbolic denial of penetration by nature against the ambition of humanity.

Up the road from the town square, down a side alley marked Cobblers Pass, and at alley's end passing under a brick archway in desperate need of white washing, a strange little market square – long since forgotten by all but its few inhabitants – opened like a courtyard in a foreign land with spices floating on the breeze, or some such silliness from a paperback romance. Four imposing homes bordered the forgotten market, their doors alighting upon impressive stone steps. Each home had a small window facing into the square at ground level and two matching windows on the top level, both looking down into the market, now vanished. The square was enclosed by the houses around it, yet it had an open feeling to it – not to mention the pervasive suggestion to any wayfarers that stepping beyond that archway between the alley and the market dictated that silence – not a comfortable or reverent silence, mind – was to be strictly observed in this place. For that reason (and many others) Mildred Hatch could not stay. She made a little extra noise as she closed her door, the trace of a smile gracing her old face as her noisiness made echoing ripples around the square, perhaps magnified in defiance of this shocking infraction. She tucked her walking cane under her arm and strode quite ably across the square, defiantly whistling to further upset the solemnity of the secluded cul de sac. When she passed under the arch, however, she transformed into a wobbly and tired old lady, weighed down by years of living in District 10. Because she shuffled her feet along Cobblers Pass, she pushed whatever light snow had fallen in her way. It was better than dropping bread crumbs, in the end: though in likeness to Morse code, the only message her tracks left was one: _I'm outta here._

When the note had been delivered to her door the evening previously, Mildred Hatch hadn't known what to make of it. She'd never been invited exclusively to tea at the mayor's home. It was a thing unheard of: and it had been a very long time since she'd had a proper tea. Velvetta made a good herbal tea and they enjoyed that on occasion, but this was a note invitation on frilly stationary, so homemade chamomile and honey tea wasn't likely to be on the menu. Mildred Hatch hadn't even been inside the Town Hall before; only Tributes and dignitaries from the Capitol, and the Victors, were ever allowed inside those walls. Mayor Stewart had been dictating policies for District 10 from between those walls for nearly twenty years now. Not once had anyone been known to receive an invitation to tea within them.

Millie wasn't due there until four o'clock, and she knew enough to know that one never arrived on time to tea, so she'd go over around five minutes past four to maintain a good appearance of manners. First, though, she wanted to see Velvetta. She put on her faux hobble, leaning not too heavily on her cane, and with the guise firmly in place, she stepped out of Cobblers Pass and into the street of the Town.

Somewhere over the roofs and in the town square, she could hear a commotion: folks were shouting and a dog or two was barking; the voices were primarily women, but some men and some children were included in the noise too. As Millie got closer to the square, she could begin to distinguish genders and ages belonging to the voices; _most_ were women (yelling, screaming), but _some_ were men (shouting, barking, cussing). As soon as the commotion hit her ears, Millie heard it die out against the sounds of breaking glass. Then there came a breathless silence, save for Millie's false hobbling on a street over the rooftops from the drama unfolding. Suddenly, shouting, yelling, cursing and crying burst out all at once. A man was screaming indiscernibly and several women's voices were hurling horrible words at someone or someones. Millie turned the corner and faced a shocking scene: a man Peacekeeper had a young man by the hair caught in the act of ruthlessly dragging him down steps into the street. The young man was bleeding and some chunks of hair were in the Peacekeeper's hand independent of his head. A woman around the man's age and a woman about a generation older were clutching his ankles and shouting at the same time at the Peacekeeper, who was shouting back. The young man was whimpering. Beyond them, a few houses down, teams of Peacekeepers were using the butts of their firearms to smash in shop front windows and kick down doors, dragging young men out by their hair. The scene was one that Millie had never dreamt of seeing, despite the horrible things the Capitol had done to the Districts. Like so many others who were present and not being harassed, Mildred Hatch made the conscious choice to ignore what was happening, to keep her head down and to go her own way as quickly as possible. She arrived at Vetta Cordwip's back door before anyone could notice her, knocked three times and leaned back on her walking cane.

A symbol of her sense of humor – though she appeared to be little more than a miserly old woman on the surface – Millie Hatch had selected the name Michael for her walking apparatus: though no longer a name anyone might find significant, Millie enjoyed her strolls with Michael cane when she wasn't in Cobblers Pass. He was a support, a companion even, when she was out about Town, but in Cobblers Pass, where she could be herself, Michael cane was just a friend who knew, excellently, when to speak and when to be silent (being an inanimate walking cane, he was more of the latter than the former, and she being an incurable chatterbox found that Michael cane's reticence suited her well!). Out of respect for her support, her strolling companion and her reticent friend, Mildred Hatch tapped him against the door lightly. After all these years, she knew Vetta would hear it. None of this came to mind for her until she had waited more than the usual five seconds for the door to be opened to her. Frowning – adding to her supposed miserly exterior – Millie tapped the door again, a little harder this time. She could hear movement inside, but it was stuttered as though the body on the other side of the door had a gimpy leg or was being burdened by something. Her frown deepened as she tried to guess what had happened that her oldest friend might be burdened or hindered. _It can't be the shenanigans going on around me_ , was her first thought, quickly followed by another: _Vetta hasn't misbehaved since Iffy lived here._ Out of respect, Millie held all other thoughts for a few moments, reminiscing on Iffigenia Cordwip, no longer among them. For whatever reason, she couldn't remember Iffigenia Cordwip without Drake Tyler – that scoundrel! So, she shook her head as though that might help her clear out memories of the boy; it didn't, so her frown deepened still. _Where is that boy now?_ She thought. She hoped he wasn't close by because wherever he went, disaster struck soon thereafter. As far as Millie Hatch was concerned, there was nowhere else in District 10 that she could live except for the Town. If Drake Tyler was, truly, the harbinger of bad luck and he was nearby the Town, Millie would gladly put an end to him if she caught him.

The boy who opened the door threw Millie for another shock: he didn't look like Drake particularly, but her thoughts cast Drake's image onto the stranger staring at her. _He could be a younger version of Drake_ , she thought as she scowled at the boy. "Are you going to stand aside and let me in, or should we all wait until the Peacekeepers decide to visit this house?" she snapped at him. He nodded and made a move to step aside for her, and he might have done it successfully at a pace Millie preferred if it hadn't been for his dead left leg in the way. Millie hadn't seen it behaving like that until she almost ran him over out of impatience. He stumbled, grasped for anything that might break his fall, and when he'd found nothing, he braced himself for the collision. Millie had relatively quick reflexes and had thrown Michael cane out to reel in the falling boy without thinking about it. She was able to support herself and him as she helped lower him to the ground before retracting Michael cane and resuming her role as a withering old lady displeased with the world and its people. The boy's eyes were wide, but he said nothing to Millie as she approached him, cast a look down upon him, and then stiffened and passed him by. She managed to call over her shoulder to him, "Close the door. It's drafty in here."

"What are you playing at?" Millie demanded of Vetta when she'd been received and invited to sit. Vetta frowned at her.

"What are you talking about?"

"That boy. Is he a Tyler?" Millie said in an accusatory tone.

"No," Vetta replied, realizing what she meant. "How could he be? Drake hasn't been in Town in well over sixteen years." Millie sniffed.

"He's your apprentice then," she decided. Vetta nodded slowly. "Because you know what happens when you take in children that aren't your own. That's why he's your apprentice." None of what Millie said was expected to be given an answer. Vetta obliged in not attempting one. "What's wrong with his left leg?" Millie asked after a moment of silence.

"He got injured and I am trying to heal him," Vetta answered, unwilling to reveal more than that.

"How does an apprentice get injured?" Millie asked, sharply.

"He was presented to me injured." Vetta offered.

"Is that how it happened?" Millie challenged, but Vetta knew her friend well enough to know that she wasn't seeking to upset her; Millie was merely being nosy.

"Not everyone comes out of their packaging all shiny and new, Mildred," Vetta said, using the power of her friend's first name to warn her about being nosy. Millie nodded stiffly.

"Seems I need some of your help too, Miss Velvetta Cordwip," Millie said, changing the tone of their conversation.

"I hope I can give it to you," Vetta replied. "What is it you need me to heal?"

"Not _heal_ ," Millie said. " _Help_." She offered a long and dramatic sigh before launching into her reason for visiting. "I have been invited to the Mayor's home for tea. Xavier sent the invitation himself. You remember his meticulously cramped handwriting, don't you?" Vetta nodded. "It rather suited him, I thought, in those school days when he seemed so cramped and meticulous himself." Vetta offered a wistful half-grin. "Of course, we had no idea then that he'd be where he is now," Millie said.

"Or that _we'd_ be where we are now." Vetta finished for her. She looked deep into her friend's gaze across the table: they had been through a whole lifetime of memories before this moment arrived for them. On the doorstep of an unprecedented invitation into Mr. Xavier Stewart's manor home, Vetta and Mildred saw in each other the girls they had been, playing in the gravelly school yard just outside the walls, perhaps even dreaming about what they'd be like when they were older. "You always wanted to be older," Vetta said.

"Older folks got to do a lot more than we got to do," Millie sighed. "I wanted to travel like I saw the rich folk doing, you know, like the Stewarts. Iris and Virginia always came back to us with stories about the mountains and the forests beyond the plains. The islands out in bright blue oceans, and the miles and miles of sandy beaches in the West. Do you remember when Iris came back and told us that ridiculous story about a canyon that opened up like a massive hole in the ground for miles and miles and miles? And then she tried to tell us that it isn't far from here!"

"Iffy always knew, though," Vetta said in a resigned tone. She had drifted into thinking about her older sister without wanting to, all the while very present and conscious for Millie's reminiscing. "I do remember that. I remember thinking that she was insane, but also thinking I wanted to go there and see it for myself. Not like we could leave 10…"

"Well, now, it wasn't 10 back then," Millie corrected her. The simplicity of her statement rendered the two friends, nonetheless, speechless for a drag. They sat looking at each other almost motionless. In the doorway, the boy with the straw-colored hair paused and watched the two women as they sat in silence, their faces reflected those of persons far off and away.

"Why do you think Xavier is calling on you now?" Vetta said softly. Millie shrugged.

"His letter suggested that he was making an effort to better know the folk of District 10, but I don't believe him."

"Anyway, isn't it too late to do that?" Vetta asked, though she expected no answer. Millie shook her head but said nothing. "I know," Vetta said after another pause. "These are the things we vowed never to talk about. I'm sorry to bring it up." Millie shook her head and took on such a piteous look that the boy in the doorway, unnoticed still, felt his heart sink merely looking at her. Mildred Hatch leaned forward and took one of Vetta Cordwip's aging hands in her own, stroking it with her thumb and squeezing it with her other four fingers. Thatcher thought it was the most comprehensive image of companionship, and it stuck with him from that moment on.

Elka Tyler came in to clear away the dishes over an hour later, well after the shop hours had expired, and she found Vetta sitting there still, alone now, looking out the window into the school yard.

"Do you think the school will ever re-open, Miss Vetta?" she asked innocently. It took a few arm-loads of dishes before Vetta answered her.

"Of course it will. It always has stayed open. Even when there were no more children left to attend. That's how it works here in 10." She maintained an even tone, a voice that scared Elka just a little. It was a voice that possessed no emotion, no feeling, no resolve nor any fight. It was an inhuman voice.

"There will always be children, Miss Vetta." Elka said, no longer authority over her own words. This feeling of being possessed by something more powerful and more graceful than herself gave Elka both thrills and chills. She thrilled at being able to see through a window that was invisible to most other people, but she was chilled by how her own words came out without her authorization. True, there were times when she could _choose_ when to speak what she saw, but this was a case in which she had no control over seeing or speaking.

"Stop that nonsense!" Vetta snapped at her suddenly. "What kind of fool are you, huh? There _won't_ always be children if folks stop breeding together. If folks are all dead then how can they breed? Can't you _see_ , you foolish girl, that's the purpose for our lives here! If we can't continue to create life, what good are we?" Vetta turned away from the window violently and glared at little Elka Tyler, frozen at the table, her eyes wide and her face rigid. Softness fell over Vetta again and she moaned as one might who is deeply sorry for something they've done. "Oh child," she began. "I didn't mean that. I didn't. You've got more of a purpose than to breed. Don't you listen to Miss Vetta when she's like this, you hear?" But it appeared that the only word Elka heard was _listen_.

"Listen," she said in a voice that was not entirely her own. Her movements were robotic, forced almost and definitely stiff. She moved as if she were being forced to, as if something paralyzed her but simultaneously gave her motion. Her expression didn't change either. Vetta couldn't help but stare, but she wanted nothing more than to look away, to run away. Still, this changeling form of Elka Tyler – so it seemed, at least – began to move toward Vetta, forcing Vetta to move back. "Listen," she said again. Vetta was listening, but she didn't want to; still, she could see no way out without upsetting this possessed child. "Listen." Elka said for a third time, and immediately a memory clicked in Vetta's brain. She stopped moving and stared at the child, not horrified any longer; she felt trapped in that murky space between horror and intrigue. "The lady wanders with them," Elka began in a level voice. "She is like wind and water, always moving and always hard to contain. She wanders with them of the clay, purely earth, also mixed, and some of fire – new and innocent to the wandering life. The lady wanderer has no reason to come back, but soon she will, and when she does, the storm will come with her. Steel and string, blade and arrow, powder and fire, metal jacket and casing. Will you go with them…when they come for you?" Vetta had backed into her own counter and Elka had advanced far enough so that she was almost on top of Vetta. As she had borne down on the older woman, her voice became raspier and took on a more ancient sound. As she ran into Vetta's knees, she giggled as a girl of her age might, but her eyes flashed in such a way that Vetta thought she was looking at three different stages of womanhood at once. She yelped and the spell seemed to break. Elka grabbed Vetta's knees saving herself from tumbling over. Her gaze broke from Vetta's, and suddenly the child seemed to be herself again; Vetta, though, was shaken to her core. "Why are you looking at me like that, Miss Vetta?" Elka asked innocently.

"Get out," Vetta said in a hushed voice. "Now."


	33. Chapter 31: Atoka Menzies

**CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:**

Atoka Menzies

The doors to the ranch-house were unlocked. Atoka gripped the steak knife in her sweaty hand, checked to make certain her way was being unwatched, and then she slipped into the foyer. Except for the ceiling fan overhead, it was quiet inside. On her bare feet, the tile floor was biting and cold. Atoka paused for a moment, long enough to let her eyes adjust to the gloom. She could see only dark grey in front of her but as the seconds slipped by her unnoticed, shapes began to materialize in front of her, and in a few minutes she could make out the proper path across the foyer and through the eatery. To the side and just beyond the refrigerator was the arched entrance to the hallway that housed the sleeping chambers. If Jesse was to be believed, Cheneye's chamber was the third on the left. Atoka gripped the knife tighter and began her final journey, the sound of the anthem of Panem ringing in her ears.

 _Thirteen hours previously…_

"I don't think I have any choice _but_ to go," Atoka replied when Moxie shot her a disapproving look. The younger girl put the final touches on their fire, lifted a small pot to the iron bar resting above the flames, and lifted the great looped handle of the pot over the bar to set it to rest above the fire. She set to work crushing herbs in the pestle, grinding them with her mother's stone mortar.

"Doesn't mean you _have_ to," she said through gritted teeth. "Besides, again I ask you how does that fit into our plans?" Atoka heaved a frustrated sigh and plopped down beside the fire, cross in a way that made her behave far younger than her years.

"It doesn't, I guess. But it _does_ put us in the Town, and a distraction at the Ranches _might_ cause the Peacekeepers to look away from the Town Hall. Wouldn't that _help_ the plan?"

"You don't see the obvious flaw in this, do you?" Moxie asked, crushing the herbs more forcefully.

"No," Atoka responded, curtly.

"You're talking about an assassination. How does that translate to causing a commotion at the Ranches unless you toot your own horn?" Moxie waited for a reply that didn't come, mainly because it hadn't dawned on Atoka that an assassination was something done in secret and therefore was something that no one else saw or knew was happening. In the arena, after all, a kill was always signaled by the firing of the cannon. In _this_ arena, though, things were different. "You weren't thinking about that, were you?" Moxie said, pushing the crushed herbs out of the pestle and into the water-filled pot. Heaving her own sigh, Moxie sat down across from Atoka and began stirring the pot. "What was it like in the arena?" She asked.

Atoka felt the suddenness of the question so sharply that she frowned at Moxie. "What's that got to do with our dilemma?"

" _Your_ dilemma," Moxie corrected. "I had a plan. And it's important because I want to know from you what it's like to be in the Hunger Games."

"Well, I don't want to talk about it," Atoka shot back. "And besides, I _had_ a plan to cause a distraction, but _you_ shot it down. So this is also _your_ dilemma."

"You were going to start a fire on your own… in the Ranches… it was a sucky plan, Miss Atoka." Moxie continued to work. "Why won't you tell me about the Games?"

"It's more awful than it looks." Atoka said back, short-tempered.

"But at the end, there's glory," Moxie challenged her.

"You think so, do you?" Atoka said sarcastically. "What's glorious about sleepless nights with a knife under your pillow, waiting for someone to attack you? What's glorious about looking at water and knowing that there are creatures in it that are going to try to rip you to pieces? What is _glorious_ about starving to death on an island so barren of food sources and under a sun so hot and cruel that every waking moment is full of prayers to the Fates to put you to sleep and never wake again?"

"Sounds a bit like life as a Prairie Dog, if you were asking me."

"Oh _yeah_?" Atoka spat, worked up and irritated that Moxie had forced her to relive her post-Games anxieties. "Well if that's so, why did you ask _me_ about the Games?"

"Because there's a major difference between _your_ Games and mine," Moxie returned forcefully. " _Your_ Games _end_." Atoka gasped: for the second time in as many minutes, she hadn't thought about Moxie's life and the miseries attached to it. She'd also shockingly realized that she hadn't thought about the lives of any of her people in District 10. But if that was on the one hand, on the other hand, how could Moxie think that the Games _ever ended_ , even for a Victor? How could she scold by suggesting that the Games didn't continue to rule Atoka's life, even now?

"You're wrong. You should know that," she said finally. " _My_ Games _never ended_. The arena changed; that's all." Her stomach growled as the scent of herbs in boiling water rose from the pot.

"I'm not a fool," Moxie said, dipping a spoon into the pot and drawing it out, offering Atoka the first taste. "I met a boy, not long ago, who tried to tell me that we are all part of the Games as long as we play them. I didn't believe him either, but I get it now. When we try to run away from the Games, from Panem, from what we are, all we achieve is running back into ourselves. But we're lesser than we were the second time around. When we try to run away from what we are, all we do is continue to play _their_ Games… the Districts' Games… but if we stay and live by their rules, we continue to play their Games too. You have to hold onto something, Miss Atoka," Moxie said.

"I _am_ holding onto something," Atoka snapped.

"What sort of world do you think your child will be living in?" Moxie said, watching Atoka rub her stomach absent-mindedly.

"She's not going to live in this world," Atoka replied, humbled by the new thought, the promise President Snow had made, a promise to destroy her life before this life destroyed her.

"That's right," Moxie said, matching her tone. "That's right, because _we're_ going to change it."

"That's not what I meant," Atoka snapped. "Don't you get it? I can't keep my child! The Capitol won't allow that! When have you _ever_ heard of a Capitol man marrying a District woman? There's no place in this world for my baby girl."

"What?" Moxie asked, shocked. "What do you mean, you're not keeping your child?" Atoka clenched her jaw and told Moxie about her visit with President Snow. When she was finished, Moxie looked caught between sickness and anger. "Is that true?" She asked in a meek voice. Atoka nodded, rubbing her stomach again. They looked into each other's eyes for a long time, and finally Moxie blew out her cheeks and shrugged. "I don't think you have a choice, then, but to assassinate Mrs. Dickson."

"What about your plan?" Atoka asked.

"There's still time to make a new one. But I'll have to make it now. It's only a matter of time before the District starts executing my folk."

Atoka slipped across the foyer, grimacing as her bare skin made small noises as it detached from the frigid tiles. It hadn't been ideal to wear her boots on this floor – on account of making too much noise – but she was certain she was risking frostbite by wearing no shoes at all. Which was worse? She didn't know. The floor of the eatery was a nice polished wood and Atoka was relieved when she set foot on it. She found her way to the closest island counter and went up on tiptoes to get around the tall sitting stools pushed under the countertop. Her foot nearly caught on the legs of one such and she had to step out onto the tiled floor again to avoid it. Her grimace made less noise than the scraping of a stool leg on wood planks might. She was working hard on stepping silently, avoiding obvious traps in how she landed and how she shifted her weight. Moxie's training had helped in those regards, but the trials were long over now: this was the real thing. She had killed plenty before, but this was the first time she'd planned a kill: this was the first kill borne of something more than just a reaction. As Atoka stepped down on the wood floor and shifted her weight to place her other foot down, the board moved and made a relatively loud creak! And Atoka held her breath, one foot on the offending board with the other freezing to the tile, waiting for her attackers to pounce.

 _Fifteen hours previously…_

It was still so cold despite the sun rising almost to its midday height. In a few hours, it would be gone and the long darkness would follow. There were three more Peacekeepers' corpses to attach to the poles surrounding the ghost-like Compound, and Moxie had indoor chores to do: she was setting fires in the remaining huts and hovels built inside the ruins of some foundation on the edge of the Compound. The smoke from the fires would alert the Wild Folk on the fringes of 10, and one band…if Atoka understood correctly…would arrive shortly with some meat to trade for a meal and scavenged blankets from the hovels no destroyed. Her task of affixing the human scarecrows was closing in on personal: Atoka hadn't known many of the Peacekeepers in District 10, but she did recognize those who had escorted her to the Town Hall and the train each year. Uriah was one of them, an olive-skinned man with a flattish face, a neat beard and a fighter's build. He seemed so diminished in death. Atoka secured him on his post and looked into his vacant, frozen eyes.

"What lies led you to this fate, Uriah?" she asked. His mouth remained agape, frozen in his last gasp of life. "By whose orders did you go, blindly, to your own demise?" She stroked his cheek, frozen and blackening with frostbite. It seemed wrong to be leaving him up here on the post he'd died upon, a frostbitten sentinel looking out across the lifeless plains to the Old Fifty Yards Tree.

"Miss Atoka!" Moxie called from a hut across the common ground. "Are you finished yet?" Atoka shook her head and patted Uriah's frozen chest. And finally she left him there.

"What's the matter?" Atoka asked as she ducked into the smoky hovel. She had no need to ask because it was clear that Moxie was struggling to make the fire in this of all huts. Atoka looked down at the wood Moxie was trying to set alight and she could tell, despite possessing unpracticed eyes, that the wood was no good for lighting. "Moxie, stop. This wood isn't good. You'll never get it to light. Leave this one. It's not worth it." Moxie shoved her off.

"Look around you, Miss Atoka. This space is the biggest after my own hut. We can house so many Wild Folk in here easily. I _need_ this fire to start." Atoka couldn't see how Moxie didn't see the futility in her actions. She stepped backward and left the hut. " _Where_ are you _going_?" Moxie called. "I _need your help_." Atoka had an idea. She ducked into one of the nearest hovels and using a knife she stripped off long curls of bark from one of the branches serving as a roof beam. She dipped the end into the fire pit, waited for it to catch and then rushed back to Moxie's hovel. One log was trying to catch and Atoka shoved Moxie out of the way, kneeling down and placing her burning bark at an angle so that the smoldering log might catch fire. Moxie crouched on the other side and began to blow on the pitiful fire. In a matter of minutes, the small fire was out completely. Moxie sat back in frustration. "We don't have much time. The Wild Folk are _supposed to be here_ soon."

"Remind me again _why_ we need them?" Atoka asked.

"Because they could help us raid the Town and rout the Peacekeepers. I told you that so many times, Miss Atoka. Why do I have to tell you again?" Atoka ignored Moxie's question.

"Well _I_ told you these logs are no good. We need to replace them."

"And _I_ told _you_ we don't have the _time_!" Moxie raised her voice.

"Well then _change your plans_ because this _fire_ isn't working." Atoka snapped back and marched out of the hut. She was ticked off by Moxie's drive to _rout the Peacekeepers_ , especially after she had been made to stake up her old acquaintance, Uriah. In truth, the plan hadn't been hers entirely: Atoka had made up some of it. The idea of taking down the Prairie Dogs and the Peacekeepers had been the original plan, but it had changed when, perhaps in a fit of righteous indignation, Moxie had suggested that the Prairie Dogs come down but the Peacekeepers stay up. Atoka hadn't had any reservations there until she saw Uriah, and now she wanted nothing to do with the old plan. In the back of her head, she had been wondering when would be the right time to strike at Mrs. Dickson, and it was becoming clearer and clearer to her that this was the time to do it. She could use the cover of their _new_ old plan as an excuse to lead an assault on the Ranches and to take out Mrs. Dickson. If she could cause enough chaos, maybe it would work. No one would expect an assault, and anyone who expected an assault wouldn't count on it being in the dead of winter. With her new orchestrations for a plan coming together, Atoka realized that the revitalization of their plan to house the Wild Folk would be to her advantage. If they were as _wild_ as the stories Moxie told, they would help her put a torch to the Ranches and use that as cover to murder Mrs. Dickson. The only trouble was that she still cared for Jesse, and thinking about that put an immediate halt in her planning. _Why_ did she have to care about that cowboy? _Why_ did he have to be one of Mrs. Dickson's? It seemed that as readily as her planning had begun, so equally readily it died. She couldn't torch the Ranches without alerting Jesse to expect it, and she couldn't alert Jesse to expect it without spilling her other plans out on him. _If I didn't care,_ she thought, _it would be much easier_. But the truth was that she did, and therefore it was not.

Perhaps it was fortuitous that Atoka should look toward the road and the Reserve at that particular moment, for a very small figure appeared upon it but as she looked, Atoka saw the figure turn from the road and direct itself toward her. It was a young girl, running as best she could on the frozen ground directly to the Compound. She had dark brown hair and features not unlike Moxie's. Her eyes went wide as she came to a stop in front of Atoka and tried to catch her breath. "It _is_ you! I didn't believe it!" she gasped, causing Atoka to frown.

"Who are you?" Atoka asked.

"I'm a messenger," the little girl replied. "You must listen to me," she said. The message that followed threw Atoka's _new_ plan into a new and possible light. If the achievement of Moxie's objectives lay in the Town Hall, all Atoka might have to do was draw attention _away_ from the Town toward the Ranches.

"And what must I do?" Atoka asked when the messenger had finished. The girl shrugged.

"Follow your plans, I guess. I can't imagine you don't have any." She smiled a really big smile and then darted away like some graceful animal, perhaps a doe or fawn. She left Atoka's planning wheels churning again.

At first, nothing happened. Atoka grimaced as she felt the tile biting her skin, and finally it was too much for her. Finally, she lifted her foot off the tiled floor and placed it, tentatively, on the next board over, bracing herself for the creak. It didn't come, to her astonishment and relief. Her heart was throbbing in her chest, and her ears could only hear the pounding of blood coursing through her veins; but Atoka Menzies, Victor of the 9th Annual Hunger Games, didn't lose her calm. She slid her offending foot off the creaking board and onto the other, and with her mistake brushed over, she began to tiptoe again. She was nearly to the arched entrance to the sleeping chambers when a shadow moved in the gloom off to her left, covered by the window and the wall. Atoka nearly jumped out of her skin but kept her calm and waited for the shadow to move again. Seconds seemed like endless minutes or hours even. Then, the shadow spoke:

"Miss Menzies, don't do this."

 _Fourteen hours previously…_

"What did the messenger say again?" Moxie was searching through stocks of herbs and picking out several that all looked the same to Atoka.

"She said that she'd seen something involving you and a whole lot of folks she didn't know. She said that she'd seen something that involved the Mayor too. It wasn't actually the Mayor, but it was his name placard in the Town Hall where his office is; she said all it said was 'Mayor X. Steward'. She said she'd seen a boy and a pantry, and a girl she knew to be your sister. She said they were hiding from someone or something. She also said she saw me, but she didn't think it was me because it looked like you _and_ your sister at the same time."

"What were we doing?" Moxie demanded.

"Nothing. Really. She said she saw us … or at least the person she thought looked like us … surrounded by shadows and ghosts. She said that she thought it was the shadows of our past and the ghosts of the men we love, which I thought was strange since you're so young. I mean, _who_ can you possibly love at your age?" Moxie scowled.

"What else?"

"She said you knew the boy. The one who is hiding."

"And…?"

"That's it." Atoka finished and crossed her arms. "You _don't_ love someone out there, do you?"

"My father is out there," Moxie replied, curtly.

"Okay. So are you saying your love your father and that's who she saw in the shadows?"

"Look, I don't think it's the shadows that matter the most, Miss Atoka," Moxie replied back. "I think it's the thing about the placard and the Town Hall. I've never actually been in the Town Hall though. Is there a placard like the one she described?" Atoka nodded.

"It's not _exactly_ as she described it. The placard in the Town Hall is all scratched and beat-up looking. I mean, Mr. Steward _has_ been the Mayor of 10 for more than twenty years now. The one she described sounded fresh like it was just put up there."

"Okay and what about the boy and the girl hiding?"

"That's all she said about them," Atoka said, shortly. "And that you knew the boy."

"She didn't say if there was another boy who looked like the first did she?"

"Nope. Just that you knew him."

"I think we have to find out for ourselves then," Moxie said after a long pause. In the silence, Atoka had begun to figure out the words she needed to explain her plan to Moxie, and as fortune might have it, Moxie seemed on the verge of rewriting her own plan. "The Wild Folk have good scouts, if they can be believed. When they come, I want to go in to the Town and scout out the Town Hall. I'm going to need you with us because you've been in the Town Hall before."

"Actually, I had another plan myself," Atoka said, raising her voice.

"Does it involve going with me into the Town Hall?" Moxie asked.

"Not exactly, but it might involve getting you into the Town Hall without the threat of Peacekeepers." Moxie set down her work for a moment and looked over at Atoka.

"I'm listening."

"Well, remember how I told you about my baby and my hope to marry?" Moxie nodded. "I _didn't_ tell you that I have to _remove_ someone first before any of that can happen. There's a Cow-man who sees too much, and I have to kill her."

"Hold on. How does any of this connect to being able to get me into the Town Hall without the threat of Peacekeepers?" Moxie interrupted.

"Listen. I have to kill this woman Cow-man and in order to do that, I'm going to have to sneak into her ranch. That gives us the cover of darkness…"

"When the Peacekeepers will be on high alert for some sort of attack. I don't like this plan, Miss Atoka." Moxie said with a tone of finality. Atoka let out a frustrated groan and crossed her arms.

" _Listen_ will you? My _plan_ is to sneak into the ranch house and assassinate the cow-man, then to raise the house to the ground. I just have to get a certain cowboy out first. It will be mayhem! The Peacekeepers will _have to_ respond."

"How are you going to start the fire?" Moxie challenged. "You can't sneak around with a lit fire in your hand."

"I don't know. I'll figure it out."

"Your plan sucks, Miss Atoka," Moxie said as if that was the final word.

"I don't care what you think of my plan," Atoka shouted. "You say that this whole thing about going into the Town Hall is something that you _have to do_! Well have you ever considered that going into the Ranches and killing a cow-man might be something _I have to do_? Or do you just think about yourself all the time?" It seemed that the frustrations that had been building up from the day were finally boiling over. Moxie didn't appear to have heard or acknowledged Atoka's outburst at all. She kept working on the herbs, picking out this one, leaving that one, sorting through the stocks for what looked to Atoka like the same kind of green leaf.

"Go see if the Wild Folk are here yet, will you?" Moxie said in a flat tone.

"Don't you _get it_?" Atoka tried again. "Your people are going to be executed because that's what 10 does when it feels threatened from within! How did this whole mess even start? Some _ranch hand_ stole a horse and ran away with a Prairie Dog girl? Is _that_ it? If I didn't know any better, I'd guess that the girl was _you_! You being out there consorting with Wild Folk and who knows who else?! I'm trying to save a life here, and you have no idea!" Moxie was up in a flash, wrestling Atoka to the ground and pinning her there with a strong arm against her windpipe.

" _You're_ trying to save a life?! _I'm_ trying to save _nineteen lives_ and my own! The plan I have might not be up to scratch with your kind in the arena, but it's got to work or else we're all dead. That includes _you_ and your unborn child. So unless you want to royally screw up this plan, give up on your own." She released Atoka, who gasped for air and struggled to her feet. Childishly, Atoka kicked dirt in Moxie's direction as she left the hut and sought the crisp albeit frigid air outside. On the periphery of the horizon, she could see figures moving at a slow pace from beyond the Fifty Yards Tree. She reckoned they were the Wild Folk and she reckoned they'd be at the Compound within the next hour. Maybe Moxie had a point. Maybe what they were working towards was bigger than killing Mrs. Dickson, but maybe, also, her plans were a part of the bigger picture as well. It made no sense to try and abandon the wild girl now; it seemed that news of the public executions of her people had lit a fire under her. All Atoka had to do was convince her that the killing of a cow-man fit into the plan. She had to do it before the Wild Folk came.

The shadow moved again, stepping from its gloomy corner and into the half-light from the window. Atoka caught her breath as she recognized the outline of the cowboy. "Please," he said, lifting his arm toward her. He gripped something in his hand, and the quick shine of light on metal revealed to Atoka what she was up against: Jesse cocked the gun and stood his ground. "Please, Miss Menzies. Don't do this. It's all wrong."


	34. Chapter 32: Bess Tyler

**CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO:**

Bess Tyler

I couldn't sit still. The room wasn't big but it was bigger than our hut in the Compound. Mayor Steward had been nice, but I didn't trust him. I asked him many times to let Striker and Lenox stay in the room with me. His response had been simple: _Put this dress on and shut up._ So I did as he told and hadn't spoken to him since then, and that was three days ago. I've done long periods of not talking to certain people before, but talking to no one because the one person I'm refusing to talk to is the only person I've seen in 72 hours, that's an excruciating task. The room has a balcony: its window is boarded up. My room has a wash basin and a mirror sitting on a wooden vanity stand precariously. I walk over to it now to look at myself – a luxury not readily affordable to us in the Compound. Here's what I see: a girl on the edge of teenage years, dirty tanned skin, hungry bluish eyes, straw-colored hair in a ridiculously frilly bonnet (pink) and a matching old-timey dress (pink and striped vertically in brown). The frills curve in a V-shape down from my neck, revealing skin: it makes me feel uncomfortable, like this is a secret I'm not in on. I slap the mirror off the vanity and it collapses on the ground with the sort of clatter that is satisfying to a disturbed soul. I go back to the bed and sit on it. I've refused to make it (Dad wouldn't be pleased, nor Moxie neither). I'm stoking the fire within me, a fire lit by defiance, by recounting the stupidity of the last week since we were rounded up from the Compound and brought to the Town Hall.

I hope he's still out there – Deane.

I hope he's still out there, running.

I hope Moxie is out there running with him.

I hope no one catches them.

I've thought a lot about freedom in the last three days. Mayor Steward has yet to tell me why he's come to see me, and why he's being civil with me. I can't guess because I've just lived on the assumption that he, like all the other Townies and Peacekeepers in this terrible District, that he hates us. I don't think there is any other explanation.

And then, he opens the door while I'm pacing about in this stupid dress that is, by the way, too big for me. I expect he's come to give me more food, but when I turn around I see that he doesn't have the prerequisite tray in his hands, so I frown.

What does he want?

He sighs, closes the door behind him and then sits on the bed. It groans under his weight, but only because he's bigger than I am. He's losing his hair even though he isn't old enough to be losing it, and he looks tired. I don't know why I make all these observations about him upon his arrival; I think it's because I've been interrupted by him in the midst of a personal moment and the only thing I can do is reflect – which is a sister to observation. I think he's not an evil man, not like Coriolanus Snow, our "beloved" president, but I do think that what he's ordered the Peacekeepers to do is evil.

Do people actually come back from being evil like that?

Is it possible?

It never truly occurred to me that the Hunger Games victors might not actually win, except for the rare occasion when Miss Menzies would cross paths with us in Town. On those _very_ rare occasions, she always had a crease between her eyebrows, the sort of crease that tells the world you've been frowning or crying a lot. Dad had that crease too, but I never saw him cry except for the night Momma died. Anyway, I suppose that means Miss Menzies has been frowning over something. I remember a time when I fell off the climbing bars at the school in Town, and the ground was so hard and unforgiving when I hit it that it hurt a lot. I didn't want to cry, so I bit my lip and frowned really hard, and I pretended I was tough. Tough like Moxie, who never cries. Miss Menzies was doing the same thing I bet. And so is Mayor Steward, I bet. And if I could get under his skin and find out why he's pretending to be tough, maybe I can see a human side to him. Or maybe there's nothing human left. He pats the spot next to him on the bed, but I don't move. He sighs.

"Fine," he says.

"Fine!" I say back.

"What –," he begins and stops, faltering. "Why are you –," he tries again but can't continue. "How are you doing?" I stare at him. "No, I mean, are you feeling alright?" I continue to stare at him. "Will you answer me?"

 _No. You told me to shut up_ and _wear this stupid dress._

"Defiant, I should have guessed." He sighs and rubs his forehead. "Alright then." He gets up and opens the door. "Food is coming. Don't eat it all at once." And then he leaves, pulling the door closed behind him. I assume my guards are put back into place as I listen to his footsteps getting dimmer on the creaky floorboards in the hallway.

When the food does arrive, I eat the bread but leave the rest. I am defiant, but I just wish I knew why. As the sun goes down on another pointless day in captivity, I ponder what my reasons might be for being defiant. There are the obvious choices: I just saw my people killed _en masse_ and I have no reason to waste away here under the illusion that I'll be spared. That's number one. Number two is that I'm in captivity and no one I've ever read about in captivity remains docile while captive. Number three is that he expects me to be defiant and so I am. Number three catches me by surprise though.

Haven't I spent a lifetime doing what other people want me to do and being what other people want for me to be?

Haven't I kept a special unique part of myself hidden away because it would disappoint others to bring it out?

Haven't I aimed to please rather than to be myself?

Am I defiant because Mayor Steward says I am?

Am I defiant because I'm finished with being complacent?

Moxie would know the answer. She always had the answer to why I was acting the way I did, and I always trusted that she would know how to handle me. But I think something serious changed when we first encountered Deane and Thatcher Scythe on the Gaming Reserve so long ago. I think something serious changed when we encountered Deane again not too long ago. I think that the parting ways we took changed our relationship. As the shadows grow longer, I discover that I am mourning the sister I told to leave. Eventually, I fall asleep and dream of Moxie, and mourn.

When morning comes, I am stiff because I decided to sleep on the floor. I'm dusty and my hair feels ruffled. I don't really care. The mirror is still on the floor where I slapped it off the vanity yesterday. I pick it up stiffly and replace it on the vanity, opening its panels to reveal myself reflecting back at me. I think I've lost weight. The rats have eaten the food I discarded; I notice this when I look for the plate somewhat longingly. It's empty, thus I surmise the rats have eaten the leftovers. I should be glad they didn't decide to eat me too. And then, he returns. Mayor Steward sits on the bed in the same spot he sat yesterday, and he rubs his forehead like he did yesterday. And he looks at me the same way he did yesterday.

"You will break fast with me in the Dining Room. Striker and Lenox will be there as well. Perhaps they will get you to talk." He doesn't say anything more, but he gets up and leaves. My guards are slow to collect me, but they do collect me eventually, and I have to go with them.

The Dining Room is actually nice. The long wooden table looks like it can accommodate a very large party with lots of seats and space, and when I walk into the room, two of those spaces are occupied by my brothers. I frown as I am moved to cry, but instead I choose to be tough like Moxie. I hold out my arms to them when I see them, and they slip off their chairs and walk to me as if there is someone containing them on an invisible leash. Lenox hugs me first; Striker holds back.

"You smell, Bessy," Lenox says, touching my dirty face. I pantomime smelling him and wrinkle my nose with a smile playing at my mouth. He doesn't know if he should laugh until I touch noses with him and give him reason to giggle. I want to cry again as I see his face break into a smile, and as I hear the rumbling of a giggle in his tummy. "Mr. Mayor let us play yesterday. We have all sorts of toys in our room. He comes and visits us a lot. More than Daddy. But he says you're sad and won't say anything to him. But you will talk to us, right Bessy?" _How can I keep from crying?_ I hug Lenox tight and squeeze my eyes tighter to keep the tears in. Striker joins us, his little arms trying to reach around our embrace. I try to move my arm to pull him in, but with a surprising force, he pinions my arm in place with his hollow belly. I can feel the bones of his ribcage tight against my arm. His mouth collides with my ear and I hear him whisper, "I hate you, Bessy."

I think my heart stops.

I fall over.

Arms pull me to my feet: Mayor Steward's arms. Striker and Lenox are back at their places at the table. Mayor Steward helps me to a spot set for me, and when I am seated, he takes his own seat. Food is brought in and put on our plates, and then the server returns to wherever he came from to leave us in peace. It's an unsettled peace we are in as we eat in silence. Mayor Steward looks at all of us in turn but he doesn't interrupt the silence until the meal is finished. I eat but I'm unsteady. Striker's words hurt, and I'm starting to feel the pain wholesale. I can't imagine what brought him to say that. When the meal ends, Mayor Steward breaks the silence.

"Thank you for joining me, Lenox and Striker and Bess. I really enjoy spending time with you all, and I would like to spend more time with you together. Would you like that too?"

"I like spending time with you Mr. Mayor!" Lenox says.

"I don't want to spend time with Bessy," Striker says, wounding me once more.

"Why not, Striker?" Mayor Steward asks.

"I just don't." Striker replies, and I can see he really means it. Part of me really hoped he was just disappointed about something and he felt like I should be the one to blame for it, but as I look at him now, I can see that he's quite certain of how he feels toward me. I frown deeper and simply let him take his shots at me, especially because he's looking directly at me too.

"That's a shame, Striker," Mayor Steward replies in a saddened tone. "She's your sister." Striker glares at me unrepentant. "And as it turns out," Mayor Steward continues. "You don't really have a choice. Unless Lenox doesn't want to see Bess either." Lenox gets emotional when Mayor Steward looks at him.

"I – I _want_ to see her." I want to run to him and hold him tight because I see him beginning to cry. He's being strong and holding it back, but he's also just seven years old and hardly knows how to be brave except for when he's hungry.

"Striker, unless you can convince your brother to agree with you," Mayor Steward says patiently, "I'm afraid you will _have to_ see your sister."

"No." Striker says coldly. "Lenox, you don't really want to see Bessy, do you?"

"Yes I do," Lenox sniffles, a wet tear beginning to escape from his eyes.

"No, I don't think you do, Lenox." Striker says.

"Yes I do, Striker." Lenox says back forcefully. I can see he's losing his control. Evidently, Mayor Steward can see it too. He holds up his hands for quiet.

"Calm down, Lenox, calm down. No need to be emotional here. We don't have to decide now. I do need to hear what Bess has to say," he says turning to me.

 _Asshole!_

"And I will interpret silence as disagreement with Lenox, if you were wondering," Mayor Steward adds. My skin bristles with newfound loathing for him. He's beaten me at my own game. I clench my jaw and glare at him. He raises his eyebrows. I look across the table at Lenox who is now crying quietly, breaking my heart. And then I see the look of triumph on Striker's face, and my mind is made up.

"Have it your way, Mayor." I say. "But as long as Lenox wants to see me, I want to see him." Mayor Steward nods, showing no signs of happiness or disappointment. Striker, however, could not conceal his disgust even if he was under duress to do so. Likewise, Lenox quits crying quietly and lets out a sob.

"Lunch then," Mayor Steward says, evenly. "We will meet again for lunch." He stands, scraping his chair across the floor. Striker jumps down from his chair and takes Mayor Steward's outstretched hand. Lenox slides off his chair, his face streaked wet with tears and snot, and joins Mayor Steward on the other side. I see Striker slide a foot out to try and trip Lenox, but by shear dumb luck, Lenox steps around Striker and foils his plan. Mayor Steward takes them out first, and soon after my "escort" comes and brings me upstairs again.

Once the door is closed, I crumble, shaking.

Is it rage?

Is it fear?

I have no idea why Striker has turned against me so viciously, but it is tearing me apart. Did Mayor Steward put him up to it?

Is Mayor Steward doing something to Striker to alter him?

I have no answers, and I continue to shake until Mayor Steward returns to my room. I fantasize flying at him and tearing his face to shreds when he steps into the room and takes his place on the bed. I don't do it, and inside I burn.

"I am sorry you had to see Striker like that," Mayor Steward says. "In truth, I was worried he might receive you poorly after our meeting this morning. He," he pauses in search of the right word. "He was _reluctant_ to see you when I told him that he was going to break fast with you. Lenox, however, made him come, and in fact it was Lenox's idea to make sure you all were together. I merely engineered a way so that it was a choice of all or nothing between your brothers."

I say nothing.

"Aside from your _reticence_ , Miss _Tyler_ , I have another problem that I sincerely hoped you could help me with. I seem to be missing sisters of yours. I've heard nothing of the whereabouts of Moxie, Arvensis or Elka Tyler. I've been to your home in the prairie and I have found no trace of them among the slain."

All I do is listen.

I will give him nothing.

"I _sincerely_ hope you do not know where they are as well. It could be quite a bad time for you if you did, and all I have wanted is to protect you and your family." I think he's going to say more, but that thought hangs in the air between us, growing hotter and more intense with the silence. Finally he gets up and goes out the door, his footsteps fading down the hallway. I don't believe his lies: he's not protecting us at all. He's tearing us apart and enjoying every minute of it.

The truth is, I have no idea where my sisters are: Moxie must be out in the Wilds by now, but Sissy and Elka…. I have reason to believe Elka is somewhere in Town, maybe at Miss Vetta's, or maybe she's dead. Sissy might be dead too. I think Mayor Steward would have told me they were dead if he knew it. A man as vile as him wouldn't shy away from a revelation like that.


End file.
